Summer Updates!

Hi everyone!!!!!

I am a bum, never checking in!!

BUT I have news from some of the people in our class. :)

Claire:
Last time I talked to her she started her new job as a Media Planner at Butler Shine & Stern(CONGRATS!)

Angie:
She's been applying to plenty of agencies and would like to switch to media (but we all knew that didn't we?)

As for me.... My Internship actually ends this Friday but the T3 likes me enough to extend my internship indefinitely until we can sort my visa issue or until I feel like leaving. We're in talks about future openings but the whole visa issue is being a major hurdle =/

Hi Y'ALL!

Hi there... just wanted to say hi to all of you, I think we should get together before some of us graduate and leave the area! I also just got a job in Paris, I'm starting the planning department of a spin out advertising agency - this is really exciting! I hope to see some of you at least before I leave, sept. 10th!
Hope everyone's doing fine!
Mag

High on Planning

These are the planners at Wieden and Kennedy. We off roaded up to this awesome little cabin at the top of Mt. Hood. We talked about planning. We drank, and watched the sunset.

Solar Powered Charger - In Pink

You can get it in Black, Silver, White, and even Pink. Here's the website if you want to check it out. It looks like it's not quite in the US yet. But you can still order it...

http://www.solio.com/v2/shop/shop2_details.php?product=149

Here is an amazing exhibition in New York City if you can make it...

http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php

Here is a brief descriptor:

Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books.

This series will be exhibited at the Von Lintel Gallery in New York from June 14th to the end of July. Opening reception on June 14th. More info at www.vonlintel.com.

Social Slipstreaming

Russel Davies put up a great blog yesterday about what he calls social slipstreaming. Here's the gist:

"I've found a few people online who seem to have similar tastes to mine, but better and more enthusiastic. They're much more likely to seek interesting events out, they're better informed about what's coming up and what's likely to be good and they're more energetic about actually going to them. Their concert-going taste is like mine but better. And what upcoming lets me do is ride their coat-tails to event happiness. I don't have to religiously read Time Out and comb through upcoming I just keep an eye on what they're going to, and I go to some of the same things. (Which is why it feels slightly like stalking, and now I write it down maybe it's more creepy than I realise, hmm, maybe I should stop.)"

Of course, it took a British planner to neatly sum the whole thing up:

"...essentially ’stalking’ someone who is more into something than you (like music or gigs or politics) and using them as a guide to the subject."

He goes on to point out how this is analogous to the way planners gather information on most everything throughout the day. So in the end, what started out as a fresh insight on a new social trend turned into a moral lesson about planning.

Funny the way things go around.

Requests from the firing line

I couldn't resist...

Where are you?

Hi!

So...how is everyone doing? Are you enjoying the trips to France, and Asia, and everywhere else? I really hope that we'll all keep in touch- So, what are the updates!?

MS and Robotics

Seems we’re getting one of our first looks at what Steve Balmer and Bill Gates meant when they said Microsoft's future isn't in OS but in Robotics.

• Mediasurface Computing - from the Fallon Planning Blog


• The Microsoft Surface Website.

The video is particularly fun. All this multi-device human interaction in a tabletop; I have to assume this is the beginning of MS new direction.



No, it's not exactly Short Circuit 3 (excuse the 80s reference, I'm just proving my age here) but its a start in a new direction that doesn't include a box on your desk or kitchen counter. If the most important aspect of robotics is human interface & interaction design, this seems to go in the right direction.

Yes, we all see the iPhone's influence in the interface but MS and Apple have always been rival siblings of the same era. Neither one would be great if the other ceased to exist. Maybe that's why MS bailed out Apple with a 150mm deal back in 1997.

Talent! Searching for Talent

The Talent Business
225 Green Street, Suite 110
San Francisco, CA 94111
USA
Telephone: +1 415 839 4003
Fax: +1 415 839 4039

http://www.thetalentbusiness.com/

Check this site

Yet another trendwatching site...yet WAY awesome!

http://www.trendcentral.com/trends/default.asp

F**king Funny

One of the best beer ads I've seen in a while...

Charge iPods, light bulbs: wirelessly

Call it WiTricity, that's what MIT researcher Marin Soljacic calls it. Inspired by the annoying bleeps his cellphone made in the middle of the night when he forgot to charge it, Soljacic set out to find a way for a cellphone to charge itself, provided it was in range of a compatible signal.

And figure it out he did.

Here's your next generation of products, advertisers. A light bulb requires 30-40 watts of power and the minds at MIT made it happen with specially tuned magnetic fields. An iPod, by contrast, might take 2 or 3 watts to recharge.

Read that again. Yes, they lit a light bulb without wires and no one got tingly goose-flesh by sitting near it. It was done entirely with magnetic fields.

Apparently, it's time for consumers to start cutting the cords. The proof of concept is detailed in this month's Science Express. Take a moment and imagine the potential for clean energy in our city streets.

Holy cool, Batman.

Sushi-view cam in a Japanese restaurant

There was something massively fascinating about this video... must be the planner in me. It's bounced around the planner blogsphere a few times over the weekend.

Is it just me, or is there something just brilliant about all those reactions to a camera on a sushi tray? Loved it.

F#$%%^%^E#Q#Q the Palm Treo

As many of you may know, I am now on my fourth Palm Treo in a year and a half. While I was waiting to receive my fourth one (after my third one was broken right out of the box), I wrote the CEO of Palm a letter and fired him (as well as the company) as my cell provider. It was a very personal letter about why it was so important to me to have it work (lifeline to my daughter). About two weeks later, I received a form letter from the customer service department saying that they wanted to help make this right by getting me a new phone if I needed too. Wrong! It wasn't a phone and a form letter I wanted, it was a real apology from the President (after all I took the time to write him) and an acknowledgment that I had been heard. Death to Palm.

Last night as I went to dinner with a friend of mine who was visiting from Virginia, my phone broke again (after one motnh of flawless operation). AGAIN! This will be the fifth one I have had. Now the iPhone comes out in a few weeks and I am wondering if maybe I should send the President of Palm a new photo... that of me holding up my new iPhone... It is such a feeling of helplessness to be locked in to a contract and a phone that I now hate. NEVER buy a TREO.

The Hype Cycle

Anyone else out there getting tired of clarion calls for the death of the agency in favor of consumer-generated-media? Here's an excerpt from Gartner's hype-cycle. We're just about at phase two right now. So this isn't to say that CGM is without merits, just that we are a long ways from understanding how to use it properly.

1. Technology Trigger
   The first phase of a Hype Cycle is the "technology trigger" or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest.
2. Peak of Inflated Expectations
   In the next phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.
3. Trough of Disillusionment
   Technologies enter the "trough of disillusionment" because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology.
4. Slope of Enlightenment
   Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the "slope of enlightenment" and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.
5. Plateau of Productivity
   A technology reaches the "plateau of productivity" as the benefits of it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations. The final height of the plateau varies according to whether the technology is broadly applicable or benefits only a niche market.

The media has been claiming advertising and marketing are dead for decades. As I commented on one blog - if necessity is the mother of invention then our greatest innovations are often born at the point of failure. We can either toss our hands in the air and quit or work through this disruptive new medium and understand how to use it in a professional and productive way.

It won't be a short process or an easy ride but I think it'll be worth it.

Event & Celeb Marketing

If any of you are interested in event/celeb marketing I might have an "in" for you here. It wouldn't be account planning but it looks interesting nonetheless.

A list of account planning blogs

For your daily reading, here's an exhaustive list of account planning blogs. But whoa horsie, that's a lot to keep up to date with. Do we really have time to read over dozens of blogs a day that might or might not have updated their content?

No, not really.

My favorite agregation service thus far has been the new Google Reader. I open this thing up like I do my Google News. Here's a hint, once you get it set up type ? (yes that's shift-/) on the window for a list of keyboard short cuts. Think of it as being like gmail for your favorite blogs & websites.

Here's some of what I've been reading. (just another cool feature of Google reader)

Changing faces

This is cool and wouldn't it be cooler if we could identify all of the works of art that this came from. It was posted on YouTube.

Here is a second one as well.

Graduation Day

I was really excited and honored to be able to participate in your graduation yesterday! It was a wonderful ceremony - somewhat in need of more creativity - but still a nice traditional occasion. I want to tell all of you who graduated how proud I am of you and honored to have been able to have met you and worked with you during the past nine months. You are awesome!

My only regret was that I could not meet your parents and see from where you came!! Anyway, it was fun and now for those of you who are looking for the full time gig or an internship, it is time to move in to high gear, unless you want to take a summer and have fun before you work for the rest of your lives!

Thoughts on How to be Interesting - The Guardian

I picked up a link out of the planning blogsphere today that I thought was a good read.

Guy Browning on how to be interesting (The Guardian)

"The more interested you are, the more interesting you become. In the same way, the more boring you are, the more likely you are to find everything else boring.

Interesting people can generally find something to interest them in boring people, but boring people are still bored by interesting people. The quickest way to interest someone is to be interested in them. If you sit next to someone and listen to them, and ask questions and generally appear riveted, they'll go away thinking you're a fascinating individual, even though you've said virtually nothing."

As being interesting is one of those keys to being an effective communicator in our field, I thought it worth a re-post.

TV Week Preview: Cavemen

We all knew this was coming, its just a damn shame the original actors are gone. The dialogue is somewhat amusing but it's hard having no Joe Dyton (the original Caveman's screen name)

Here's the clip

Also worth a look, if you're a fan of Steve Jobs, here's the October conference where a 28 year old Jobs introduced the 1984 commercial. I'll give him this, the man has always had a flair for the dramatic.

Yay!

I'd like to add a book to the "Books to Read" section: The Flight of the Creative Class, by Richard Florida.

and here is an interesting ad-guy blog:

http://eschenck.typepad.com/ernie_schenck_calls_this_/

LET'S START!!

Come on Folks.... This is ON!
waiting for your postings now......