Russell Davies

duck

Had a trip down to the river. Started off at HMS Belfast, which was splendid. The best thing we found out is that the Belfast's forward guns are trained on Scratchwood services, about 12 miles away. This just gives you something new to think about at Scratchwood.

Then off to the Design Museum, which, as always, was disappointing. Every time we go we vow never to go again. It costs a fortune and the features always look great on paper and let you down when you get there. Today was no exception. An exhibition on surfboards and shapers which told you very little, seemed only to scratch the surface and was visually unthrilling. Which seems hard to do with surfboards. The only decent thing there in recent years was the Thomas Heatherwick collection for the Coran Foudation.

forest park

Just got back from a couple of weeks in Portland. Had a very nice time. Particularly enjoyed myself wondering around Forest Park. It's one of the great things about Portland that there's a ruddy huge forest just a few minutes from downtown.

AAAA account planning conference

So, I think I'm going to be a speaker at the AAAA Account Planning conference in Chicago at the beginning of August.

And I was wondering if anyone who might be going had any requests about what I should talk about.

The possibilities that I've already got something on are:

How We Got To All That Fab Honda Work. (inc. the power of multidimensional brands and the value of doing creative and strategy in the same place, at the same time.)

Planning 3.1 - The Demise of Account Planning In Large Advertising Agencies and the Growth Of Creative Strategy Everywhere Else.

Strategy Beyond Words - (inc. How messages don't really matter, how post-literate cultures build good ads and how integration really happens)

Plus, some jokes, and I have a cunning plan for a game we can all play. And I guess if an interesting conversation ensues on here I can talk about that. That'd be the modern way, after all.

Or does anyone have any other requests?

closer to newsnight

Small excitement in our house. Anne's going to be on Go For It on Radio 4 (7.15, Sunday evening). Talking about We Are What We Do.

We often have this idle conversation about which of our friends is closest to appearing on Newsnight as some sort of pundit or expert. With this move Anne is a step closer, well a step closer than Radio Derby, which is all I've mangaged.

mind the ukulele

jedi_moves.mov

This is probably just for friends and family, or people who know Arthur. It's him demonstrating his Jedi skills. (But you'll be pleased to learn I've mastered the dark arts of compression and it's only 1.5MB)

trip to seattle

Drove from Portland to Seattle to visit an old friend. Very nice to see her. Stopped in first at a Starbucks and tried the new Hear Music thingy. I liked it. Though the music policy seems to have been designed to attract the music dollars of marketing professionals with little interest in music, but it's a diverting way to pass the time. And it's very easy to build and burn your own CD. Assuming you mostly want music by people who play guitars.

Then we strolled around the Fremont Solstice Festival, which is very Pacific NW. And therefor fabulous. Lots of art cars there. Many of which looked familiar from my days in Portland, though maybe the same themes tend to recur.

And, of course, there were lots of utilikilts on show. Fantastic. It's not an alternative Pacific North West event without a substantial utilikilt presence. Well done gents. (I have no hesitation in recommending the Utilikilt to you as the World's Leading Men's Unbifurcated Garment.)

when you're bored in a hotel

you take odd pictures

what happened?

Steve over at Bowblog has been wondering about his stats. He's getting 11,000 unique visitors a month. Which impresses the hell out of me. I don't think I can tell that from Typepad. They tell me I'm getting about 200 hits a day which seems pathetic by comparison. Though there's more at ebcb.

But, anyway, I've been obsessing about something else. I've been using bloglines a lot recently. Splendid service. One of the things it does is tell you how many people are using them to subscribe to a feed from your site. For ages it's been 57 people for russelldavies.com. But just yesterday I've noticed that it's now 56. I've lost someone! And it's obsessing me. What happened? What did I say? There's quite a low barrier to just leaving the subscription there so they must have very actively deleted me. it's quite depressing.

Oh well.

our own little morrisey

Arthur and I were mucking about with the ukulele (which he insists on calling a piano) when he started making up these fantastically odd songs and we started recording them.

He's currently experimenting with micro-tonalities and quite Morrisey-like lyrics ('it's hard when you're five').

What was even more fun was the look on his face when he listened back to himself on the headphones.

MP3

quiet desperation

I was cleaning out a cupboard and I found this t-shirt. It's from the days when we had (and were losing) the Microsoft account, maybe about 1999? We used to make all sorts of t-shirts for presentations in those days, all written in this nicely long-winded, thoughtful, amusing style.

But it was such a battle. We use to compromise on everything, all the time, just so we could get to the next meeting and then the next meeting and eventually get something on air. So one day, before a huge meeting some of the creatives had these t-shirts made.

I'm very proud of mine.

And I bet this sentiment feels familiar to a lot of people.