Archive for June, 2007
a post about post-its
Yesterday’s New York Times had a great story charting the migration of the post-it from the office to the home (registration required).
At my house, the mere presence of a post-it has become significant, without the need to actually write on it – a post-it on the iron left out in the kitchen means ‘still hot!’ for example.
Thats the beauty of the humble post-it – its simple enough to adapt to whatever system you invent, from colour coded diary reminders to ’add peas’ stuck on the side of the cooker. The article commends the humble post-it as a cache for information that will not ‘stick’ elsewhere – like in your brain.
I seem to remember my Mum doing something similar with index cards and selotape more than twenty years ago, but she didn’t have sticky pink florescent stars to use for that crucial stand-out factor :-)
Here we go round the brandwagon again
I was talking to a colleague about the whole trend for back-to-basics, good-clean-fun, simple, rural, old-fashioned-values entertainment and events that seems to have gained momentum recently – best embodied by the Innocent Village Fete.
He made the very good point that its all very well for Urbanites to be thrilled to rediscover the joys of Morris Dancing, Cream Teas and Coconut Shies, but many of those people who actually live in and engage with rural communities have been quietly enjoying these delights ever since they were, well, children and are a bit over them without the benefit of a few decades of rose-tinted absence.
Which means that organisations who try and jump on the brandwagon of Ye Olde English Rural Nostalgia could actually be alienating a large chunk of their target audience.
Finally, a proper feel-good film
I went to see Oceans 13 last night with a friend. We were both feeling a bit under the weather and had to drag ourselves out to the multiplex. But we were so glad we did.
For the measly sum of £6.50 we spent two hours smiling, laughing, gorging on all the eye candy on offer and generally having a brilliantly undemanding, escapist and entertaining time.
Tongue firmly in cheek, Brad, George, Matt and Eddie (Izzard) led us though another caper that actually left us hands up ready to applaud at the end (until we remembered where we were). And isn’t that the point of going to the flicks? To suspend reality and enjoy yourself? I don’t think we’d have got the same uplifting high from a French art-house film or the latest Tarantino blood-fest.
Good looking men in suits + casino heist = two girlies feeling much better.
A different magazine every week?
Back at the end of last December I posted about my aim to try and read a different magazine every week. I thought I’d take stock of how I’ve been getting on.
I’ve been making a real effort to pick up something random from WHSmith every time I go through Kings Cross station, but I’ve also changed hairdressers to one that only stocks Hello! and OK!, so if nothing else I’m now an expert on the wedding plans of minor European Royals and C-list celebs.
I think my list of Random Reads so far goes something like: Pet Product Marketing, Yorkshire Living, Time, The New Yorker, Psychologies, Wisbech Standard, Fenland Citizen, Hair Ideas, Your Hair, BMW Magazine, Red, Weightwatchers, Top Sante, Pregnancy and Birth, Mother and Baby, Morning Advertiser and PaD (Property & Design).
OK, so some of the titles might have been related to projects and pitches I was working on at the time, but they still count, right?
What I’m loving right now
- ‘Never gonna break my faith’ from the Bobby soundtrack, performed by Aretha Franklin & Mary J Blige and (slightly randomly) written by Bryan Adams. Annoyingly, not available on itunes UK…
- My Dino and Terry specially-for-interesting mix CD
(Picture by Ben Terrett, hope this is OK)
- Its stopped raining! For at least the last six hours!
- My horse’s funky new shock-absorbers – basically I’ve had him fitted with the horsey equivalent of a pair of Nikes
May he live in interesting times
This post by John Griffiths might help to explain exactly why I refer to Russell Davies so much in this blog and why interesting2007 was a great manifestation of the Russell Davies ‘brand’.
other things I learnt at interesting2007
- how to make a post-modern eggs, bacon, chips & beans
- how to get a comedy-entertainment TV show commissioned
- how to change the world for a fiver
- why we like printing
- that Cezanne didn’t like touching people or being touched
- video games are Art
- comic books are very big on intertextuality
- shorter is harder
- the mundane can be interesting
- cities are slow computers
- bunting rocks
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt
I’m guessing that it was a bloke at The Design Conspiracy who printed my t-shirt as the logo was positioned so that it sat neatly under my boobs, rendering it invisible unless you were less than three feet tall. Never mind, it was a nice idea…
So, the day itself. Conway Hall was a perfect venue and like the big brother of The Breakfast Club (spiritual home of Coffee Mornings).
I’m not going to go through every detail or every speech because the other 299 people there are bound to have covered if off, blog-wise and the 500+ pictures in the flickr pool provide a pretty comprehensive record of the day, but I learnt some very interesting things, including:
- the history of shaving foam
- nine ways to make a better erotic film (they had to remove Russell’s six year old son Arthur for that bit, obviously)
- why men with short legs are better swimmers
- how to chop a log
- what its like to be on Oprah
- why Ibsen and The Muppets have a lot in common
I saw the editor of The Spectator do a fabulous Al Pacino impression and The Independent’s Rhodri Marsden play a saw like a violin. And I finally met Beeker as well as making friends with Carol, Claire and Sam.
It was a fantastic day. The post-lunch Buddhist chanting session wasn’t my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed every other speaker, as well as the general chatting and milling around, the afternoon tea (courtesy of W+K) and the session at the pub afterwards.
There were goodies and freebies galore (badges, books, shaving stuff, a specially-for-interesting mix by Dino & Terry, fruit, smoothies from Innocent) and, more importantly, a real sense of everyone mucking in to make the event a success.
But the abiding memory I’ll take with me is the inscription above the stage at Conway Hall that seemed to sum everything up:
Sooooo excited
Interesting2007 (or as my MD refers to it, Planner’s Paradise) is tomorrow! Can’t wait, I’ve signed up to twitter so that I can receive on-the-day updates and am ready to blog, flickr and twitter my experience.
Also looking forward to receiving my one-off event t-shirt from The Design Conspiracy and meeting up with Andrew, James, Russell, Paul, Rob, Lauren, Beeker and well, everyone there.
Note to clients: do not have any strategic crisis this weekend as the UK planning/creative thinking community will be unavailable.
