Russell Davies

writing about advertising

When I left Nike one of the things I wanted to try my hand at was writing for money. It'd always been a little dream to be writer, but I've always been too lazy/nervous/crap to do it. Blogging made it possible, it led to the Campaign thing and today they're letting me try a new experiment; 'live-blogging' for Campaign from a seminar in Cannes. It's going to be interesting. I've managed to avoid Cannes for my whole career but now someone's paying me to go I'm quite interested to see what it'll be like, because I'm going to feel like an outsider. And with any luck I might get to meet Rob for the first time. Of course the grim reality of it is that I had to be up at 4.30 this morning and I'm typing this at 6am in Terminal One at Heathrow. Still, I'm managing to convince myself it's a bit more glamorous than usual because I'm being 'a writer', not just going to present some nonsense or other to someone, but obviously that's a delusion.

(I'm quite liking the meta-ness of this; blogging about blogging. Maybe I should do a Campaign column about it and blog about that.)

official interesting2007 platinum web developer?

I'm meeting Russ this afternoon to collect the polaroids he took, and get the scans of them. And we've got a ton of film and audio to put up somewhere. And it strikes me that just sticking them on this blog probably doesn't do the job properly. It'd be nice to have somewhere we could archive all that stuff, link to everyone's presentations, and to any ongoing conversation. But I don't know how to do that. The only 'tools' I know how to use are PowerPoint and Typepad. So I was wondering, is there anyone out there who can suggest a very easy way of getting this built, or is there anyone who'd be willing to build it? I'll make you a nice badge. If you're up for it drop me a line - russell at russelldavies.com. thanks.

(picture by chris)

interesting thanks

Arthur rather knowingly reminded me that I managed to thank about everyone in the world from the stage apart from him and Anne. So my first move has to be to put that right. Anne has been a complete brick about the whole thing, being willing to let me lose quite a pile of money on this whole venture and it wouldn't have been possible without her. So thanks Anne. (She only reads this every couple of months or so, but Anne, when you come across this - thanks.) And you too Arthur, if you come across this when you can read.

And now to the thanks that did get mentioned from the stage, but should be repeated here.

Sarah and Charly are now Foskett Massey, they organise things. And they organised the hell out of me and Interesting, all for free, and happily.  They're complete stars and you should get them to do stuff for you.

Also brilliant were all the folks from Imagination; Louise, Chris and Crispin especially, they provided all the AV stuff and came and ran stuff on the day. And completely got into the spirit of it.

I also need to say big thanks to Ricky from Ogilvy PR's Digital Influence group who came and filmed everything at the behest of John. That was very decent of them and hopefully we'll have some lovely film to show you soon.

Do I need to thank The Design Conspiracy again? Probably. Lovely design stuff. Lovely.

The folks from Folksy were splendid too, apparently they sold quite a bit of stuff, but I also think it just added to the atmosphere, like knowing your eccentric uncle is out in the shed doing interesting stuff. If you're doing a conference you should ask them along.

And we should add Innocent for supplying the smoothies, Will and Steve at King Of Shaves for donating class-leading shaving oil, IDEO for paying for the apples, w+k for paying for the scones and Paul for making them. Then I must also say thanks to Jez at Sledge for paying for those rather excellent vegetable matter cups, spoons and plates, and to Love for paying for the  Yorkshire Tea and Yorkshire Tea Biscuits, to Dino for making that fantastic mix for us, to Simon and Curtis for the recording/soon-to-be-podcasting, to Penguin for bringing books (what did everyone get?), to Russell for the portraits which are going to look brilliant and to my OIA colleagues for supporting the whole thing in innumerable ways. Have I forgotten anyone? I bet I have. Sorry. I'll update with additions soon.

But I must say, to everyone who came; thank you for delivering on this:

and sometimes this:

Just, you know, generally, thanks.

interesting material

Well, stuff's beginning to arrive. We've got Rod's splendid sketches, I think this is my favourite:

And we've got a ton of other stuff that people left to be scanned and uploaded:

But I think the most talked about and captured thing so far has been Mr Rhodri Marsden's performance of Wichita Lineman on the saw. You can hear a good audio version on the sidebar of the wiki, Matt has video here, but I think the most complete version is Roo's.

picture from Tim. It's all just beginning to sink in. It was a good day wasn't it?
 

interesting continues

Well, it happened. Blimey. The picture above is something else that was happening at the same time in the Conway Hall, and without knowing what it means, it feels like a good summary of our conference too. Thanks to everyone for everything. More comprehensive thanks and links to everyone and all the video and podcasts and all sorts will start showing up once we've got it all edited and etced. But here are some little odds and ends that need tidying up first.

Firstly, a bunch of very nice people who couldn't be there on the day made videos for us to show, but we just couldn't squeeze them into the day. So, assuming it's OK with them, I thought I'd put them up here instead. The first is this rather special Interesting2007 edition of Stefan's Dailly Monsters:

interesting monster from russelldavies on Vimeo

Secondly, Interesting2007 media is beginning to arrive, and it's all capturing the flavour rather nicely. There are the latest pictures on flickr tagged Interesting2007. Curtis has set up an Interesting2007 flickr group. And Tim's made a page on the wiki for links to pictures and video here.

multumesc

Got back from Bucharest yesteday, had a great few days there with Iain and Faris, who've both written about it better than I could. I'd just like to say that if you ever get the chance to go there, you should, it's not got the glamour of Budapest or Prague but it's a fascinating city and the people are talented and creative and funny. It's always a good trip.

And it's also worth saying, if you're ever stuck in an airport, you should have Faris with you...

faris juggling at the airport from russelldavies on Vimeo

interesting help and tonight

Well, the goodie bags are mostly packed, the bunting is mostly collected, things are mostly ready, apart from all the things that aren't. So, if you were thinking of coming over to The Design Conspiracy tonight, don't worry, we're mostly done.)

Tonight; we're going to be at the NFT bar on the South Bank from about 6.30. More details via twitter. (Is that what it's still called? I haven't been there for ages.)

presenter's friend

Should you care to, you can hear me blahblahing on the World Service's Culture Shock. Until Monday. It's a hugely rewarding programme to make, especially for someone like me who likes nothing more than making up opinions about stuff I'm in no way qualified to talk about. You get to go down in the bowels of Bush House, the people who make the programme are the kind of dedicated, thoughtful BBC broadcasters who make it the best organisation in the world and they just play you interesting stuff and get you to talk about it. What could be better?

But I think the best thing about it is the job description you find on the cheque you eventually get from the BBC; it's 'Presenter's Friend'. Isn't that the best job description ever? And it sums it up quite well too.

interesting things

Some reminders and thoughts if you're coming along:

1. We're not providing lunch. You'll have to bring your own or go to one of the local cafes and pubs. There are some nice ones but we're not sure exactly which ones are open on a Saturday. We have spoken to the man who runs the cafe in Red Lion Square and warned him to expect some extra custom so he should be ready. He's very excited. And, while we're mentioning it, we're not providing fancy coffee, just a big urn, some milk, some tea bags and some instant coffee. So if you want a foamed milk drink you'd better get one on the way. And you could bring me a cappuccino if you think of it.

2. I think there's going to be enough room in the hall for a bit of lounging on the floor down the front. So if you think 7 hours in a chair might be a bit too much bring a cushion or something and prepare for some lounging.

3. We're going to start at 11am. So please be there by at least 10.50 so we can run you through the elaborate signing in procedure. Probably around 10.30 is ideal. You're welcome to arrive earlier, you can mingle and chat in the hall, or in Red Lion Square, if you'd like to help out then anytime after 8.30 and we'll find you something to do.

4. As I've said before, no physical tickets are going to land on your doorstep between now and Saturday. You should have had an email confirmation from eventbrite, print that off and bring it along.

5. And there's still time to add yourself to the event wiki, introduce yourself to your fellow attendees in a digital-stylee.

6. If anyone has time to help on Friday, we're going to be at The Design Conspiracy from 10.30am onwards. Come along if you can. If it's later than 2.30 maybe check the Interesting Twitter to make sure we're still there.

7. There'll be some kind of drinks get together on Friday evening too, down on the South Bank somewhere, watch here or the Interesting Twitter for details.

interesting twitter

Adam and Mario have very kindly handcrafted us an Interesting2007 twitterfeed. They are saints. Big thanks to them. This means that we have a twitter-based backchannel for the conference. Not 100% sure what we might do with it, but I'm sure all sorts of utility will emerge. I can certainly imagine using it to summon you all back from lunch and maybe to organise pre-conference drinks on the Friday. How about on the South Bank somewhere?

For the less digitally-inclined, in fact for everyone, we're also going to have a post-it based backchannel stuck on the wall.)

Adam's instructions are here:

So you want the 'interested' to see your twitterings about interesting2007? Here's how:

1) Get a twitter account
2) Add russell davies as your friend. Don't worry, you can always delete him later ;^)
3) Write 'interesting2007' (without quotes) at the start of your tweet. That copies your tweet to interesting
4) To follow the interesting2007 conversation, add interesting as your friend or subscribe to this rss feed
5) That's it!

Love adam and mario