My DNA personlity type

I came across this on Chris' blog via Twitter and had a little bit of time to kill so did it. I turns out I'm what they call a 'Free-wheeling' inventor - I actually quite like the description, I think it sounds good for someone working in planning & strategy ;o)




Nice test, I'm a bit surprised I have a low level of empathy on their scoring though... On cool sort of test basis, I'd recommend 'Now, discover your strengths' which is more about looking at your main strengths and encouraging one to develop them rather than overall personality - it's really interesting. Buy the book and do the test online.

Next generation talent

Melanie invited me this evening to judge in a social media panel for this Next Generation Talent competition ran by Panasonic in partnership with YCN.

For the launch of the new Viera HD TV entertainment hub, Panasonic decided to run a competition for aspiring UK creative talent to create a print or TV ad for the new product. From the 60 entries, the Brand Communications Manager at Panasonic and creative agency Billington Cartmell shortlisted about 15; and this evening a social media panel of about 8 people further shortlisted the candidates down to 6. From tomorrow for 48 hours (very short time frame...) people can choose their favourite entries on the website and an ad is going to be published in the Guardian tomorrow morning to that effect.

I had a very nice evening and thought it was pretty interesting for a bunch of reasons. To start with, it was the first time I was on a panel for an advertising competition, so that was pretty cool.

Referring to Will's post here for a second, I noticed the conversation tends to go towards swiftly towards bullshit bingo. I tried to avoid some words, but they keep coming back. I guess It can't really be helped given it goes with the territory, but it's always funny to notice. We could have had printed grids, really...

More interestingly, some of the entries were really great. It was sometimes difficult to judge given a lot of effort had gone into all of them. The conversation kept coming back to what the idea was behind the execution and whether that was something that could be used for an ad, which is fine for the purpose of selecting a winner, but another point I think is more interesting is the fact they have great material for brand advocacy and sort of high level user generated content they could be promoting a lot more than for just one winner of a competition. And the fact that the voting is limited to 48 hours is a shame as well.

Here are the 6 selected by the panel this evening:

'All memories in HD' (I'd say that one was my favourite of the 6)
'Centre of attention'
'Meet your HD family'
'Boxes'
'The mess around'
'Roots'

Now a very special mention to my personal favourite: 'The beehive' or 'BeeHub'

It doesn't actually have anything to do with the brief, but it's mad and I'm going to remember that one and talk about it. It would be amazing for some sort of viral piece - or purely promoting the fact that Panasonic is actively encouraging creative talent in the UK, and not just looking for someone who do their next ad.

And even about a next ad, just think again what a drumming gorilla has to do with chocolate before you start knocking off the bees...

Referring to a great post from Paul I read this morning, the competition itself is advertising that does and that's where there is a lot of value. Rather than trying to get a 'professional' ad out of one those competition entries, keep expanding and encouraging people to do and talk about this TV and these advertising ideas and creative concepts - that's more exciting - like the bees.

PS: Neil just opened Think Tank post of the month votes, there are some really good nominations, go check them out!

Fill a plane

A friend in China just invited to participate in this digital campaign for KLM Asia-Pacific, I thought it's a nice little idea. Register your plane and invite your friends on board to win prizes once the plane is filled up with passengers. In the meantime, have your picture on the homepage:



Apparently you can only email your friends about it, but coming soon are the Facebook applications and stickers for your blog or website - though I find it a bit strange they launched the campaign without having those ready...

Macy's Rickrolls America for Thanksgiving

Awesome! You may have seen this by now, but if not check it out:

They managed to have Rick Astley, appear and perform the song suddenly in the middle of the Macys Thanksgiving parade, amazing ;o)



I think Rick bowed down to the power of (internet, in this case) memes!

Just like this one!

Tropfest short film festival winner

Tropfest is the worlds largest short film festival. It already happened a couple of months ago so you may have heard of this, but this year for the first time the best film award was won by someone who shot their short entirely with a mobile phone camera.

The movie itself is beautiful, so if you have 3 minutes check it out, but it also made me think more about the way we use/consume/create media, not only has it been getting easier and easier for anyone to create and use production tools on their computer (I recently edited a video at work in a couple of hours, and it was the first time I ever opened iMovie) but all the different tools are getting mashed together in smaller and smaller devices. It's a topic that is definitely being talked about a lot these days, but I'll look at putting some of these thoughts together for a post.

I was also at the Mushrooms of the Russian Avant Garde exhibition on Saturday, I'll definitely write a post about it tomorrow once I upload the pics to Flickr - it was pretty weird and fascinating...

Global Beersphere

Thanks to Andy for the logo!

Catching up on on my posting so this is already old news but the Global Beersphere happened last week and it was a great evening! Thanks to Faris for initiating it and to all the people in different locations around the world to take on managing the event. For those not in the know, Beersphere is a casual gathering of all sorts of planner type peeps, generally in a some cool bar or pub and guess what? Having beers/drinks and a good chat.

The lovely Rachel was our official host for the evening, and it was a pleasure to meet her again and as well as a good bunch of other always interesting people.

The event took place last Thursday 13th November, for the first time in about 9 locations around the world: New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Melbourne, Amsterdam, Boston, Berlin and Bucharest!

Blogadi Blogada

Image courtesy

It's being a seriously busy November over in Ice Cream land, but going to the London Bloggers meetup always inspires me to make an effort and get back to writing a few posts. Thanks again to Andy for organising the event, and also for the inimitable inspiration for naming the events - which gave me the title for this post as well!

It was nice to see some people met before (Anthony, Jaz, Andy, and others) and meet new always interesting people is as ever a great pleasure (Melanie, Hayley, and several Chris - sorry I need to find your blogs).

Melanie who writes at Fake Plastic Noodles, which for some reason I thought was Fresh plastic noodles - (Sorry I haven't had time to read it yet, but hopefully will soon) talked about some differences in the UK and US blogospheres, her experience of moving over to London and the fun it was getting working visas in order, some good talk about PR / blogger outreach good practices, and it finished with some great informal questions / conversations.

A few more drinks and good conversations and we was on my merry way home. I'll definitely try to make it to the next one. As I said, it's a great way to meet cool people and find out about all the different topics they blog about and it's really a good motivation to post regularly.

Last post before November!

Happy Halloween everyone! I'm very proud to announce this is the 15th post this month, which for those very math astute will realise that's extremely close to a post every other day! But I'm probably the only one that cares that much...

So let's get to what I'd like to write about quickly. I was at Playful today and it was an absolutely amazing conference. Certainly the best one I've been to this year and one of the best ones I've been to full stop. I think what was really brilliant was to bring together a bunch of people passionate about whatever domain and particularly interested in play, games, interaction from different fields and talk about what they are doing. So a wider spectrum than if they had only invited hardcore game designers - more than often probably pitching the latest product they developed (nothing wrong with that by the way, but I guess not what I was looking for today).

Which brings to what I was looking for today. Nothing specific, really. But I came out of it really inspired! I learned a lot of things about hacking things, making them do stuff they weren't meant to. Theories about games, play, meaning, scores, etc. A lot of very smart people either demonstrating experiments, or talking from a slightly more abstract point of view about people, play and games.

I think one special mention for myself was to meet James Wallis from Spaaace. James opened the event with a brilliant talk about play in general, OuLiPo and a lot of other interesting things inclusing board and role playing games which I love. The best was to learn over a drink after the conference that he designed one of my favourite card games ever: Once Upon a Time. The funny thing is that I just did an internal talk about playing games last week (Which I will upload to Slideshare very soon - as soon as I find some time) and we're going to organise some sessions fro Once upon a time and a couple of other games. A lot of other talks were amazing and I will tell you as soon as they are uploaded on Vimeo and Flickr for the pics

Thanks again to Toby, Richard, and everyone else at Pixel-lab for organising the event! Thanks to all the sponsors as well - Poke, Melinda @ Miss Geeky, The people who provided lunch that I can't remember who they are right now, etc...

PS: I think I just realised James Wallis also created Nobilis, an RPG I've been wanting to try for a long time that looks amazing! And I also realised that had I simply read the details on the speakers list, I would have known all of that already, but hey...

Robocop on a Unicorn (And people stuff)

Image courtesy

Also because from this post onwards, October will be the month with the most posts in this dramatically thought altering - NOT - ice cream blog!

And just because that's what it's all about!

If you're still wondering what the "it" is I'm talking about, call your mom. Watch Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. Go for a drink and have a laugh. Give a call to your best friend. Check the status of the US election campaign/election. Have a drink. Update Twitter. Cook a meal. Whatever else you fancy...

Next step, pull it all together. This time the "it" being all the data, information, experience, feelings, thoughts, opinions, etc.

Analyse.

It doesn't make any sense.

For the most part, and that's just to be nice, all the sense that is there for you is what you added.

And that's people.

I love it!

PS: I was completely not going to write this originally, but there you go. It almost wrote itself. If this doesn't make any sense to you, I would estimate you're on the right track. Same if you disagree. Or even if you agree for that matter. The secret is in short sentences. Although there is no secret.

PPS: I had a nice time at the Digital Lounge - I may even have had a drink or two for those ready to believe such an astonshing statement. I'll talk about Digital Loungers later on. And by the way, Robocop on a Unicorn is a big meme that is going round the internets these days! Check it out. Do tell me if you explain why, I'm sure it will be quite entertaining.

St Mary's Hospital

Some weird things are happening over there, apparently... Check it out!