“What makes some brands inspirational, while others struggle? BNN’s Kim Parlee and Andrew Bell find out from Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi.”
Kevin talks Apple (iPhone, iPad) vs Blackberry. “[RIM] is out of touch with the consumers. They rely very much on matrix, research, and facts. [...] The miss how the consumers feel.” I had a lot of fun seeing Kevin chat with the two hosts.
I had the great pleasure to like to listen to a 2009 nextMEDIA keynote by Janet Kestin, Co-Chief Creative Office of Ogilvy Toronto. For those that don’t know Janet, she lead the team that created the award winingDove Evolution campaign which has been viewed over 300 million times. I will blog more and post some video clips later.
I am looking forward to a full day of nextMEDIA sessions and then some partying tonight at the Crossover Cocktail and Opening Reception.
Updated: 12:08pm
Love the nextMEDIA keynote “Interactivity, Creativity & Web Domination” by Janet Kestin, Co-Chief Creative Officer – Ogilvy Toronto. Wow, Janet lead the team that created the Dove Evolution campaign. It was my honour to meet her in person finally. I will definitely blog more and post more video later.
Here are my three previous blog entries about the Dove Evolution campaign. (first one in 2006 Nov)
Join Janet Kestin, Chief Creative Officer of award-winning Ogilvy & Mather Toronto, who helped produce some of the Web’s most talked about interactive ad campaigns, propelling brands into worldwide consciousness. (Just check out the cheeky Diamond Shreddies Campaign for Kraft, or the interactive film for female 20 something’s Waking Up Hannah.) Get your creative juices flowing and listen as Janet explains how digital media is changing the nature of creative output. Learn the underground tricks of the trade when it comes to creating interactive digital media campaigns.
* What do you have to do to entice people to experiment with media?
* Is there a prescription for creativity when it comes to digital media?
* How do you create an interactive experience that doesn’t break the narrative?
* Can you ever ensure that content will go viral?
* What would you list as your top 5 creative campaigns?
[June 9th Update: In total, I conducted two video interviews with Minister Blackett. The first interview was conducted on June 6th and then 8th (see below YouTube videos). I was unprepared for and a bit shocked by the "justifications" and "reasonings" provided by Mr. Blackett to my questions & concerns in the first interview. After further research and readings, I was much more prepared in my second interview and less able to simply accepting Mr. Blackett's "explanations".]
[Note: The goal for this post is to add grounded reasonings to this passionate debate/discussion. Thanks.
I will update this post as more information becomes available.]
Earlier today (June 6th), I met and interviewed Minister Lindsay Blackett for the first time to ask him about some of my concerns about Bill 44 (PDF or see bottom of this post). (see video below)
I pointed out to Minister Blackett that Alberta Teachers Association has expressed serious concerns about Bill 44. To my surprise, Blackett was dismissive and said the union doesn’t speak for all teachers and implied the 20-30 supportive teachers he has spoken to are more representative of the general teachers’ opinions about bill 44. Is the teachers’ union really this misinformed about bill 44?
Your help (please share your grounded comments and insights)
While trying the best I could in my first interview with Mr. Blackett, I was no match against the well briefed and studied minister in the interview and I probably missed many important concerns and potential problems. So I have done more research and conducted a second follow up interview (June 8th) with Mr. Blackett.
*** Two video interviews with Minister Blackett ***
Lindsay Blackett Bill 44 video interviews (June 6th)
Lindsay Blackett Bill 44 video interviews (June 8th)
After further research and readings, I was much more prepared in my second interview and less able to simply accept Mr. Blackett’s “explanations”.
*******
Thanks for all the comments left on this post so far (as of June 8th, 7:17am). Please keep them coming. It is important to have teachers, students and informed readers sharing their informed opinions here.
The following is a selection/excerpts of some of the comments received so far, I’ve added some emphasis. Please keep them coming.
From “Ken Chapman”,
“The Minister is misleading you on teacher reaction to Bill 44. You [Blackett] did a presentation yesterday to the ATA Executive Group and Senior Adminstratin in their strategic planning session. All 60 of them were negatively concerned about Bill 44. They are getting lots of teacher feedback that expresses Bill 44 concern too.“
From “John Winslow”,
“Mr. Blackett denies the existence of any opinions contrary to his own. Unfortunately, he never seems to have PROOF that those who agree, outside of the obediant MLA’s, exist.”
From “WhiffofGrape”,
“Over 450 teacher representatives chosen by their colleagues from across the province met at the Alberta Teachers’ Association Annual Representative Assembly over the Victoria Day Weekend. All save one voted in favour of a resolution calling for the removal of the education provisions from Bill 44.
Perhaps Hon Blackett should release all of the letters / emails that he has received relating to Bill 44.“
From ” A. Letourneau”.
“Minister Blackett should speak to his colleagues. I am a teacher, and I called my MLA Hector Goudreau to express my concerns with this bill. From conversations with other teachers, I feel the minister is wrong in his judgement that the majority of us support 44.”
9 The following is added after section 11: Notice to parent or guardian
11.1(1) A board as defined in the School Act shall provide
notice to a parent or guardian of a student where courses of
study, educational programs or instructional materials, or
instruction or exercises, prescribed under that Act include
subject-matter that deals explicitly with religion, sexuality or
sexual orientation. (2) Where a teacher or other person providing instruction,
teaching a course of study or educational program or using the
instructional materials referred to in subsection (1) receives a
written request signed by a parent or guardian of a student that
the student be excluded from the instruction, course of study,
educational program or use of instructional materials, the
teacher or other person shall in accordance with the request of
the parent or guardian and without academic penalty permit the
student
(a) to leave the classroom or place where the instruction,
course of study or educational program is taking place or
the instructional materials are being used for the duration
of the part of the instruction, course of study or
educational program, or the use of the instructional
materials, that includes the subject-matter referred to in
subsection (1), or
(b) to remain in the classroom or place without taking part
in the instruction, course of study or educational
program or using the instructional materials.
* Heated Telus debate this morning at #nextMEDIA. I commend Telus for sponsoring the debate even more people agreed with views expressed by Michael Geist than David Neale (SVP Products & Services – TELUS Consumer Solutions).
* I didn’t have any expectation when I saw the title of this morning’s keynote and I was very pleasantly surprised by how much insights Alexander Manu had packed into his talk. When I find some time, I will take a look of these downloadable book chapters.
*******
The Death of Print: Is There Any Way Out?
Moderator Don Dodge, Director of Business Development – Emerging Business Team – Microsoft Corporation Participants Jerry Brown, Director – PricewaterhouseCoopers Candice Faktor, Managing Director – Corporate Development & Innovation – Torstar Digital Mathew Ingram, Communities Editor – Globe and Mail
[Updated: 8:23am MST, June 7th]
Many honest but grim (e.g. lost advertising revenue) insights from Candice and Mathew. Lots (and lots) of stats from Don and, especially Jerry. (In general, I am allergic to stats unless I know precisely how the stats were gathered.)
***
And then I attended the keynote “The Wolf in the Story” by Gary Carter, Chief Operating Officer of FremantleMedia, and Chief Creative Officer of FMX (FremantleMedia’s experimental division). (see below for Gary’s full conference bio.)
Since I’ve attended a talk given by Gary two years ago at Banff (or nextMEDIA?), I know how insightful Gary is. So before the keynote, I went up to say hi to Gary and told him how much I look forward to his talk because I learned a lot from him two years ago.
As expected, Gary’s talk was full of insights (and some with deep references, a few of the references were a bit lost on me). After Gary delivered his keynote, he had a very probing and insightful Q&A session with the audience and also shared with us some of the interesting things FMX was and is doing.
If you have a chance to listen to Gary, go & learn. If you want to follow the company’s activities closer, you can set up a Google news email alert on Fremantle Media.
Conference Bio:
“Gary Carter, Chief Operating Officer of FremantleMedia, and Chief Creative Officer of FMX, FremantleMedia’s experimental division focussed on non-linear, broadband-enabled projects considers storytelling in the digital age. Rejecting a narrow view of the respective roles of the professional storyteller and the amateur audience, he will argue for new kinds of narratives for new kinds of platforms, new kinds of subjects for new kinds of audiences, and new means of production for new means of consumption. And he’ll tell a few jokes. Probably.”
*******
Minister Lindsay Blackett & Bill 44
I interviewed Minister Lindsay Blackett and asked him about a few concerns with respect to Bill 44. I blogged about it in this post.
Here is my interview with Paul Bloore (Idee’s Founder, CTO & Inventor). Paul has worked on the underlying technologies for years and is one really insightful inventor and businessman.
I am definitely going to pay close attention on the latest development at Idée inc. It is amazing to note that, “Idée’s visual search solutions are the foundation for some of the world’s leading imaging firms, including Adobe Systems Inc., and the most widely adopted solutions in the stock image industry.” They even have Idée Labs for their new new stuff (like Google Labs).
Bill Buxton’s nextMEDIA 2008 keynote address was my most anticipated session of nextMEDIA this year and I was not disappointed. And I even got to meet Saul Greenberg (another HCI expert and Bill’s friend) as a bonus as I stood at the back of the room, holding my copy of Bill’s book, listening to the keynote and waiting to get Bill’s autograph like a fan! (as an aside, check out the sorryBill and sorrySaul videos, they are deadly funny)
You can check out a few video clips I recorded. By the way, I have also recorded the full audio of Bill’s presentation and finally got around to put it onto my cell phone and I will be listening to it as I drive in the next little while.
After the speech, as I was waiting for Bill to autograph my dog-eared copy of his book, I overheard something interesting and insightful as to Bill’s way of working. Apparently, after talking to one of the key conference organizer the night before, Bill actually decided to completely rework his keynote presentation. And the result was just awesome. (BTW, I can only think of Tom Peters as someone that can easily reorganize things completely and pull off a spectacular presentation.)
P.S. For the record, and I think it is a great quote, here is Bill’s personal mantra:`Ultimately, we are deluding ourselves if we think that the products that we design are the “things” that we sell, rather than the individual, social and cultural experience that they engender, and the value and impact that they have. Design that ignores this is not worthy of the name.”
OK, I am doing my catch up postings of nextMEDIA 2008. On day 1 of nextMEDIA 2008, I attended the Bollywood or Bust session to gain some fresh perspective about the Indian digital market. Afterwards, I had the pleasure to interview two experts from India (educated and with business experience and knowledge in Europe and US).
* Finished my last interview last night at 10pm. It was a great chat but I was completely exhausted.
* 7:30am – 8:30 attended the comScore Media breakfast and presentation. Got to meet and chat with some interesting people in table. As one of the fellow breakfaster is a lawyer, I bought up issues (release forms, E & O insurance) bought out by the film Redacted and the legal troubles of Borat (release forms). (big smile)
* Canada’s Hotest Digital Media Innovators. CEOs from four different companies companies presented. Afterwards, I had the great pleasure to interview Leila Boujnane (CEO of idee) and Paul Bloore (CTO of idee). The tech geek side of me was particularly fascinated by a chance to meet and talk to Paul, the inventor of the technology. I will post my interviews and a longer post later. By the way, I blogged about their cool technology in Apr 2007.
* Got a chance to preview the first two episodes of the controversial CBS new show “Swingtown” last night. I love the acting of Molly Parker (I quite like her in Deadwood and I first found her great acting in the controversial Kissed) and Jack Davenport (his UK original Coupling is a must see for edgier comedy lover).
* I will get a chance to attend a master class given by Alan Poul, executive producer of “Swingtown“, so I will blog more later.
* Quick note for tomorrow morning’s breakfast. I will attend a breakfast with the Chairperson of CRTC, Konrad von Finckenstein. From what I have heard of Konrad, I know I am in for a treat of a well prepared and straight talking speech.
*******
P.S. I wished there were more sessions available in nextMEDIA so I can pick ones that fits my interest better and I can blog about.
I promise I will blog a lot more later after the conference when I have more time to organize my thoughts and the audio & video recordings that I have created. So for now, the following is just a brief highlight of the things to come.
By the way, this year the conference is putting up lots of videos and stuff in a pretty speedy manner (same day, I think). So check out their site for some cool interviews and stuff. Better yet, come and check out the conference in person next year. (OK, OK, no more ads, I promise. :)
******
- Got here safely this morning (in semi-heavy rain).
- ~10-10:50 Digital Media Giants – Insightful speakers from CBC, CTV, Telus, Quebecor Media, etc. Some pearls of insightful quotes. Will post some clips.
- ~11:20 – 12:00 Jeff Barr, Amazon.com talked about some really cool Cloud computing stuff. More to come.
- ~ 13:30 – 14:20 Bollywood or Bust – Some interesting insights about India. More to come later. Did an interview with the insightful Faisal Galaria, Jaman.com . And I am going to conduct another interview (with Parmesh Shahani, Mahindra & Mahindra) in 15 minutes after I post this.
- ~ 14:30 – 15:30 A wonderful presentation by Lisa Osborne, Digital Content Lab of American Film Institute. Afterwards, I had a great chat with Lisa and I will be posting my interview her later.
- ~ 15:50 – 16:30 Harnessing the Power of Social Media Platforms – There are some pearls of insightful quotes. Will post some quotes.
*******
P.S. On a more personal note. I bought my well-read copy of “Sketching User Experiences” for Bill Buxton to autograph. And as luck has it, a man standing next to me started commenting on my book (full of yellow stickies on all three sides of the book!!!) and suggested that I should show it to Bill. As he sounded like he knows Bill, my gut instinct was to ask, “Are you Saul ? [You see, Saul Greenberg is a great friend of Bill]” And of course he is Saul
And another more amazing thing was when Bill was taking a photo of my book (with all those ugly yellow stickies), he told me that he has actually read my blog and enjoyed my analysis and commentaries on things. Now, I have no reason to think that he was just being polite (because he didn’t have to say anything about my blog). So his kind words definitely made my day. :)
P.P.S. Now, I am going to try to connect with Saul (he is a computer science professor at University of Calgary) and attend some interesting seminars at U of C. When I was an undergrad at U of Toronto computer science department, I used to really enjoy attending those free seminars and colloquiums (those with interesting titles) intended for people (including my professors) that are way way way smarter than I was. :)
It is wonderful to know the insightful Bill Buxton will be delivering the opening keynote at nextMEDIA (June 6 – 8th, 2008 at Banff),
Bill Buxton, Principal Scientist at Microsoft Research will deliver the opening keynote address at nextMEDIA – The Future of Digital Content. In his keynote address Bill will speak to emerging trends around physical computing and a human-centered approach to technological design and innovation.
I’ve been writing a monthly Chinese column about “user generated media” (自製傳媒) for a local Calgary newspaper since December 2006. For the July 2007 issue, I talked about my experiences as a blogger/reporter reporting on CBC Dragons’ Den (under the blog Dragonfly on the wall) and also nextMEDIA and Banff World TV Festival. The article is written for a general audience. If you can read Chinese, I hope you will enjoy it.
Forgive me for my shameless self promotion here. But it is kind words like these that made the extra hours (with 4-5 hours sleep every night) spending in blogging/reporting about nextMEDIA and Banff World TV Festival sweet.
And words coming from Keith who has attended nextMEDIA and Banff for years mean a lot to me. With Keith’s permission, here is what he said.
And thank you providing me with the information of your blog on NextMedia and Banff. Very interesting and very well done. I learned a lot more than what I learned on site.
Keep up the good work and thanks again.
Keith Chang Director General / Directeur général Trade and Investment Branch / Direction général du commerce et de l’investissement Canadian Heritage / Patrimoine Canadien
And seeing emails and comments from readers and viewers telling me that they enjoyed and learned from my interviews, reports, and video clips also make me a happy blogger & reporter.
Thanks go to everyone who took a minute to write to send in your kind words of appreciation and encouragement, your words are deeply felt and very much appreciated. Thanks.
One thing I enjoyed a lot at nextMEDIA and Banff World TV Festival was all the interviews that I was able to conduct with the world leaders of new media and TV industry to pick their brains. I would like to thank them again for sharing a few minutes of their time with me.
I hope you will enjoy the following interviews as much as I in conducting them,
P.S. I worked real hard to get every one of these interviews. And I promise to work even harder to get you more interviews next year. Of course, once I am more established as a blogger/reporter, I hope the interviewees will be more willing in granting me interview time slots. This year I ended up just waiting patiently after their speeches and hope I could get an interview. This year, after lots of wait and determination, I was “lucky” 50% of the time. (big smile)
As I wrote in a previous post, I met the Hong Kong entrepreneur Paul Lam (no relation to me) from zooin.net at nextMEDIA and Banff World TV Festival. What interests me the most in this case is that his company’s technologies are sitting at the intersection of both sides of my interests — TV and patent protected technologies.
A quick Google found that the Korean entrepreneur Park Hyun-je is both the CEO of zooin.net and also co-inventor of some of its patent applied technologies. For the patent geeks (like me) out there, here are two of zooin’s patent applications (see submitted patents) for your reading pleasure,
“[0002] The present invention relates to a multicasting technological field of an internet broadcasting system, and more particularly to a multicasting relaying method to achieve a multicasting under a modem environment utilizing a digital subscriber line (xDSL) and a public switch telephone network (PSTN) and a recording mechanism that can read a program to achieve the aforementioned method with a computer.”
“[0001] The present invention relates to a multicasting technology in an Internet broadcasting system; and, more particularly, to a virtual multicast networking method for establishing a multicast network without changing existing routers or switches on the Internet, and a system thereof.”
My regular readers may remember that I mentioned in a previous blog entry when reviewing a TV show that,
And thanks to “2165 The Best Mode Requirement” of the MPEP, the patent is required to disclose the “best mode” to make this device thus making the patent an interesting read. (smile)
Have fun as I am sure I will when I get around to read up on them a little.
Greg Goodfried (co-creator and executive producer of LG15) gave a presentation at nextMEDIA and Banff World TV Festival about some history and thinking behind Lonelygirl15.
Smita, Scott, and Paul attended this year’s Banff World TV Festival and I know them previously so I will start with them. (smile)
Smita Acharyya – CTV Fellow 2007 – introduces herself and her project. (note: I have known Smita for a few years now as she is a wonderful documentary filmmaker in Calgary. She was quite helpful to me earlier on, and I returned a favour by shedding light on the CTV Fellowship application process for Smita. It is a small world and I try to help my friends.)
Scott Feschuk introduces himself and the comedy he is pitching at BWTVF. (note: I knew Scott from the wonderful master class interviews that he did for Banff in 2006. I particular enjoyed his chat with Paul Haggis. Love to know Scott more.)
Paul Lam (no relation to me) is CEO and Co-founder of Zooinnet, and Paul comes all the way from Hong Kong to pitch his product and create contacts.
(Geek alert: By the way Paul, as far as I know, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a “worldwide patent“. True, you can establish a priority date through internationally agreed treaty. But you still have to go to, e.g. the Japanese government, to apply for a patent to protect the IP in Japan.)
Now here are some other pitchers that I came across.
I met David Cormican at a dinner thing. I shared with him some of my business advices and he gave me a demo DVD which I enjoy a good portion of it. Here is one he has put up on YouTube – THIERRY – HAPPY BIRTHDAY.
I met Siobhan McCarthy (Blyssful) while waiting to attend a session. Siobhan is pitching her comedy project at BWTVF – (see video).
I met Dennis Allen – Mackenzie Delta Films (Inuvik) in a party and here Dennis introduces himself & his project (see video).
Here is my interview with Dale Herigstad, Chief Creative Officer of Schematic and speaker at nextMEDIA and Banff World TV Festival. Dale is a very insightful man and I hope you enjoy my interview with him.
RT @emmgryner: OMG just got off the phone w @Cmdr_Hadfield who signed off saying "see ya when I get back to Earth"...and I got chills 6 days ago
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