Russell Davies

exactly what I said I wasn't going to do

I've just done a thing for w+k, they had a petcha-kucha-style thing in Amsterdam as a way for everyone to get some sleep between the incessant parties celebrating their 25th anniversary. And they asked me to do my thing. The format was 25 slides for 25 seconds each and I made some slides that I thought might be useful for other people, maybe. I've stuck them up on flickr, but these are my favourite new ones. Feel free to use if you think they might be good for something.

You'll have to guess what I actually said to go with them.

some mistakes are bigger than others

orangaid

I met a bunch of doers at the Howies thing last week, we suggested they use every avenue they could think of to promote their cause and they're wasting no time. Helen emailed to ask me to mention this benefit gig she's organising in aid of The Sumatran Orangutan Society. The 14th of May at the Lyceum. It's got very funny people and it's a very splendid cause. You should go.

And are their any designers out there who could spend two minutes making this into a slightly more blog-friendly graphic for them? They've not asked but I thought that might be a nice thing to do if anyone else wanted to post this. I tried but I can only really operate PowerPoint.

conference and coffee news

We went to have a proper look at the Conway Hall this morning. Some students from St Martin's were in there and had the place looking rather village hall-y, which is exactly the vibe I think we'll be aiming for.

 

I particularly like the bunting. Does anyone have any bunting?

We also decided that we could make room for another 100 people, so we'll be putting more tickets on sale. BUT NOT YET. To try and make it fairer we'll let that news sink in for a bit and post an announcement about the extra tickets on Monday. That OK?

In other conference news Lloyd has been wondering whether we'd print the Interesting2007 logo on an adult romper suit and the answer is a resounding yes. So we're all looking forward to seeing Lloyd on the day. So far The Design Conspiracy has only got one t-shirt for printing (so they're going to make it rather deluxe), don't forget to send your own if you want one.

We were also wondering if some of you know yourselves well enough to know that you won't be arsed to send a t-shirt in and would like us to order some and make them for you. Comment below if you'd be willing to pay for a specially manufactured Interesting2007 t-shirt. Not sure how much yet.

More conference news next week; ticket sales, some confirmed speakers and exciting sponsorship achievements and opportunities.

In Coffee Morning news - there is one at The Breakfast Club on Friday. I won't be able to stay very long because I have to go and earn a living, but it doesn't really need me any more anyway. Maybe see you there.

people under instruction

This is the sign on the back of those blue London 'driver under instruction' buses that London Transport use to teach bus drivers how to, er, drive buses. It's incredibly disarming. It would be good if someone could attach this message to the internet and then maybe everyone would be nicer. We're all still learning.

uke?

I have a quick question to ask Interesting2007 attendees. But once I've asked it I want you all to forget about it, because it'll spoil the surprise.

Does anyone play the ukulele?

If so please comment below, or email me. (russell at russelldavies.com). Now, everyone, forget I ever mentioned it. Just carry on. Nothing to see here.

temporary retreat from randomness

Here's last week's Campaign thing. I fell for the last resort of the desperate columnist and wrote about twitter. Sorry about that.

If you've been watching the blogosphere recently you'll have noticed that everyone's all aflutter about something called Twitter. It's a simple little thing that allows a kind of nano-blogging; you can use your phone or your computer to announce (to your friends or to the world) what you're doing right now. And some people do that. Others use it as a platform for jokes or complaints, or to announce the biscuits they're going to eat in a meeting. For some it's a digital postcard. Most people use it as a virtual equivalent of the quick hello in the corridor. It's stupid, pointless, trivial and completely addictive. The best introduction is to go to twittervision.com and watch the twitters roll in from around the world, it's like a haiku-sized soap opera with a cast of digerati grouching and joking through their digitally-mediated lives. I mention it because Twitter points at some interesting things to think about:

1. It wasn't invented by who it should have been invented by.

Twitter has driven massive amounts of increased text usage, from me alone, yet it wasn't invented by any telco, it was invented by some software/web guys in silicon valley, because it was a service they wanted. The costs of developing these things are so low now that ideas like this are popping up everywhere, in a fraction of the time it would take to squeeze them through a corporate hierarchy. And it didn't have to be tech guys. It could have been someone reading this.

2. The stuff we used to dig for is now bubbling to the surface.

If I was launching a global marketing campaign today, especially if it was vaguely techy, I'd project a big twittervision screen on the wall and see if it showed up there. That would be a sign of success. I bet Apple could do that, watching the twitterings about the iPhone announcement was a mark of their brand power. You can see your campaigns unfold on blogs today, but it's slow, it doesn't really live up to the name 'buzz'. When/If Twitter gets big you'll know immediately if you've made an impression.

3. You won't understand it until you try it.

It's become increasingly clear to me that you can't explain new media to people. Just as you can't understand TV by reading about it you can't really get digital media without trying it. It's not how the service works that's important, it's how it feels to do it and share it with your friends. So have a go. And add me at twitter.com/russelldavies

And on a more important note Caroline of Campaign has another Campaign Yahoo! Big Ideas interview coming up and wonders if anyone has any thoughts:

The next Campaign Yahoo! Big Ideas interview is with Alan Bishop who as chief executive of COI has one of the most challenging and varied jobs in communications, handling the most important campaigns around with objectives set by ministers rather than marketing directors. Caroline would like to hear if you have any questions to put to Alan (who is, incidentally, Britain’s largest producer of toy hedgehogs – for its child road safety initiative). Comments on this below please.
 

let the randomness commence

If you get the chance get yourself a set of Monopoly Express. It's brilliant. It's not just truncated Monopoly. All it really retains of the original is the property/building/cash metaphor. They've transformed it into a 20 minute dice game which has lots of the odds-considering risk-balancing pleasures of poker. And it's a really nicely designed set. Compact and well made. If only they'd thought to include a little pen or pencil you could lose later.

is good

We've just come back from a fantastic week in Wales and a great couple of days with all sorts of inspiring people at the Howies Little Big Voice lectures and I think it's time for some change.

Because I'm not really enjoying writing this blog at the moment. And I don't think I'm bored with blogging, I think I'm bored with blogging about brands and planning and advertising. There really doesn't seem to be anything left to say. Not that I can think of anyway. And since I'm supposed to generate 440 words for Campaign every week about it I'd better keep what powder I have dry for them.

It's not like there's going to be a sudden global shortage of online opinion of about advertising and brands. Even the IPA strategy group has a blog now and I'm sure they'll be doing multiple daily updates to keep you all satisfied.

So, if anyone wants to host Post Of The Month please feel free - Jason do you want to carry on? And if anyone would like to take over the School Of The Web please let me know, it's easy to criticize, but I think it had one key advantage over the alternatives in that it actually existed. And I'd love to see what a proper planner would do with it. (I'll get back to all the people who sent me Starbucks stuff with some hopefully useful thoughts as soon as I can.) Similarly if someone else wants to maintain things like 'all the planners' and 'hire these people' that'd be great too.

I suspect my planning-blogging retirement will consist of the gardening and tending of Plannersphere I and some chat with people in Plannersphere II. (I think of them both drifting in space like the geodesic domes in Silent Running, tended by three drones and Faris as Lowell.) If people have questions about planning and stuff I'd suggest you direct your questions that way.

(Prospective future employers please note that I'm only retiring from online chatting about planning, I'm still game for doing it. I/we are very much available for all your freelance planning needs.)

So what am I going to do instead?

My first responsibility is to make interesting interesting. Look for news on that soon. It's shaping up nicely.

I want to stick some energy back into eggbaconchipsandbeans and agoodplaceforacupofteaandathink. Fry-ups were my first love and they will be my last, fry-ups of the future and fry-ups of the past.  Doing that, and not becoming morbidly obese, will demand that I also revive my efforts at non-entity fat club. I'm also determined to convert in defence of the ordinary into an actual book proposal by the end of the summer. So I suspect that will mean lots of introspective posts about the nature of things and writing. And, I want to spend more time with steamboom, because I'm already liking vox as a way of keeping a family diary.

And then, I want to get to the front of the train, and write and learn and do about stuff that I don't know anything about. So that, maybe, in a couple of years I'll have some more strings to my bow and somewhere to run when advertising finally collapses under the weight of its own self-importance.

The things that seem interesting to me at the moment are UnProduct - Matt Jones's excellent term for something that exhibits maximum idea, minimum stuff, CreativeSpaces - an examination of what physical (and maybe digital environments) are conducive to commercial creativity and what I'm pretentiously going to call The Consilience Agency. Though I don't really know what I mean by that yet.

And, obviously, there will be lots of random stuff. If I've learned anything from Interesting2007, Coffee Mornings and my trip to Howies it's that trying new random things often works out. Actually trying things. Not just writing about them. So that'll be part of the plan too, lots of random doing. I think it was the randomness of blogging that I used to enjoy so hopefully it'll liven things up again.

For now I'll put all that stuff here, along, I guess, with the Campaign articles, though if an idea gets enough traction I guess it may get its own blog at some point.

So, if any of that seems interesting please feel free to stick around.

absent

Probably won't be on email. And I've turned comments off here, too much spam to let the garden go untended I'm afraid. And, if you're going to the Little Big Voice Lectures, I'll see you there, come and say hello. And when I'm back there will be changes. Oh yes, there will be changes.