Collaborative Creation Presentation

Here is a presentation I gave at the Marketing Expo of DMEXCO in Germany. It is one of the largest Marketing Expo's in Europe and it was a real privilege to talk about the projects and the collaborative creative process we use at Indie. I hope you enjoy it.Click HERE if you want to skip to my part of the presentation or just skip to 11:55 in the video below.

Viva La Givolution!

For the past few months I've been working at INDIE. One of the projects I've been working on is the new campaign for Ben & Jerry's. The site is the first "Give It Forward Auction" site. This is better than Freecycle.org because of the wonderful stories that happen.

It starts with 100 ice creams from Ben & Jerry. People bid on them. So far there are bids like theater tickets, foot massages, jackets and more. Those people get an ice cream and then others can bid on those items. For instance guitar lessons, etc. The winning bids then become the next in the chain of giving forward. Or what we like to call Giving Chains. If you are in Holland (it is in dutch only I'm afraid) you could try it out for yourself. Trust me there are a lot of very cool things that are going to be planned for this campaign so keep watching here. It's gonna be a lot of fun! And I can't imagine a better company than Ben and Jerry's to do it with. a real socially conscious company. Viva La givolution!!!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQykGinvNrw[/youtube]

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My New Job as Digital Creative

The headline says it all! Today I have just signed a contract to be Digital Creative at Indie in Amsterdam. I am so excited about this new job and about working with the team at Indie. Indie is a great Agency in Amsterdam with an excellent reputation, formerly known as SVH. For the past month I have been working closely with Lode Schaeffer, the head Creative at Indie on a few projects. I am very excited about all 3 concepts that we have created and successfully pitched over the past month. The chemistry at Indie feels perfect. Here I've found a company that's not scared to try new things and strive to push the envelope of advertising. One of my favorite campaigns they created was with Sportlife and the Yetiball.

Working with Lode over the past month has been a challenge and also a great creative collaboration. In Holland Lode's reputation proceeds himself, and to say I've sat across from him for the past month concepting is enough to make many people in the biz in Holland nearly break their necks in a double take.

There are big plans and lots of great projects on which I will be working, officially starting on January 1, 2010. All I can say is that Indie is finally a place where the crazy ideas I have and the preachings about engagement and approach of digital campaigns do not fall on deaf ears. Quite the opposite, they are being stimulated. What's also great about Indie is that they understand how important it is for me to be able to work on purely creative projects and to keep teaching Design for Virtual Theater and Games at the HKU, which they have re-enforced in our agreement by allowing me to work part-time still as a teacher and digital artist.

To get a perspective on how much Indie is prepared to try new things we have projects ranging from Augmented Reality Games to Virtual Flashmob Dance mash-ups in pre-production. A very exciting time, and a very exciting company to work with. I couldn't have dreamed of a better job at a better company a few months ago. A big thanks toIsabelle O'kanewho made the first introduction with Tim O'Kennedy that landed me an interview with Indie. Thanks a bunch Isabelle! Next time out the champagne is on me. Now I head back to the states for the Holidays to reconnect with my family before starting this next adventure. PEACE!

Image by Guido Van Nispen

Dark Night Viral Campaign

Many people wonder how Viral Campaigning works. Many beleive that all you have to do is make a funny video woth a cat and that will spread the message. Sorry, that was about 2-3 years ago. The truth is nowadays you have to create a Multi Media Alternate Reality Game. Otherwise known as an ARG. There are puzzles spread over the internet, areas to communicate with other players, real world phone calls and emails. This is how you create a Viral. Not just a 30 sec. clip but an allround Media experience, puzzle and immersion. These are the types of projects that my students have been developing over the last few years. One of the first of my DVTG students created on his own, with no budget, an alternate reality game that spread from temples in Thailand, lockers in London, phone calls from New York and the Vatican. Using the tools available all over the internet with free sites, this is how Alternate Reality Games are spread. Below we see a video of the Dark Night Campaign, and there are 2 of the Transformers virals that were spread. Those videos spread from the transformers is called, "The Rabbit Hole". Or the first video trigger that leads one into the Alternate Reality Game.

HELLOO GERMANY!

So last weekend or so I was in Berlin to Speak at a workshop, and I did an interview with gruenderszene as well as some other journalists. In any case gruenderszene posted the video interviews as well as a nice writeup. In the interviews I talk about twitter, the difference between entrepreneurs in Europe, United States, and Israel. I also talked briefly about my thoughts about how there should be a fund by technology VCs and investors that be given to artists to try and understand the meaning of what we are building. Of course this is already happening, becuase artists will always do this, but it helps stimulus when they can actually live off of these crazy pieces they do. It's an idea that Paulo Cohello says will come but in years time at Le Web. Well here are the videos. They are posted on gruenderszene.de. The translated post is here.

Brand Talk with Friends

Joking around with friends about the Adidas campaign "Impossible is nothing". Rose Bertins tells the story.

Create Passwords EZ with L33T

The other day I was helping my friend Isabelle out with her blog. Of course setting up a blog with your own hosting etc. you need some good passwords, for example many sites insist that you create an extra strong password. Isabelle was having trouble with good passwords that were easy to remember. I told her about my L33T technique and she thought it was brilliant. Here is what I told her.

A good password has a number of letters and text at least 8 characters long. Many sites require this. However most people just use thier phone number, or name or a word which are all easily hacked using a dictionary or number crack. As I talked about before, having a few passwords for different sites is a good idea. I usually say 3 max so that if one doesn't work, you can try one of the other 2 before getting locked out. This is because most sites allow for password retry for 3 times. Ready to make one of your own?

1. think of a phrase that you like or can easily remember. A good idea is to have some letters like O and I in it. for instance: "I Love Gummy Vodka"

2. Writedown your phrase on a piece of paper and start replacing letters for numbers. Also add a couple letters as Capitals. 1LuvGummEV0dkA

3. There is your new password. however if you are still having trouble with it, just take your phrase and place it into a LEET translator, and remove the spaces to get this: 1l0V39ummyV0Dk4

4. No this is not a password I use, but I am waiting for my gummy bear vodka to be ready. Another week or so now I think.

Leet is a style of writing that popped up on the message boards when certain words were being censored or filtered and has found it's way into our culture. Much of the LOLSPEAK and SMS or TEXT message techniques we use today are derived from LEET speak. Thank you L33T for helping me remember my passwords.

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No MORE Twitter!

File this in the category: WTF? I log into my twitter today to see this:

MY FREAKN ACCOUNT IS SUSPENDED! FOR WHAT? And what pisses me off the most is the fact that there is no email to sent to me to give a "Head's Up!" or WHY? Nothing what so ever. I have to surf through the site for 30 min. to put in a request that will probably take a week or so for me to get through. Screw it. If this service treats it's users with such fascist authority, I'm out. Fuck Twitter, Fuck Biz Stone fuck the lot of you.... So I'll probably burn in hell for this. Might as well post my shitter video with Chris Sacca (one of the investors in twitter). Yes I can feel the burn now...

update: It seems that there was a glitch in the matrix with twitter. I again have access, but all the sudden I started following strange people in my account. Looks like I have to purge my followers. I beleive my twitter account was hacked actually. Marc believes it was Russians. Great, now I've got Russians hacking me to worry about. In the end I'm still upset and turned off by twitter as I still have no idea, no correspondence, nothing to what happened or what it going on. Come on guys! Can't you even explain what happened in 140 characters to me? I find this lack of communication disturbing.

Free Audiobooks for summer

Image via Wikipedia

Many of you may be planning a vacation, or maybe staying around town for vacation. One thing I love during vacations or long drives is audiobooks. It's nice to listen to podcasts, but sometimes a nice audiobook for a longer period is better. Although you can buy many audiobooks on Amazon and Audible.com, there are a lot of FREE audiobooks at LibriVox. Also great for you students who have to read some books over the summer! Have a look, and have a listen. It is opensource, so that means if you really like a book, you could create an audiobook from it as well (as long as it is public domain). Yes that is the catch. Only public Domain books, but there are quite a lot of classics amoungst them. Enjoy!