As always, I’m sorry it’s been ages.

Anyway yesterday I went up to the loft, opened the skylights, and this popped out. It’s perhaps got a bit more of a old fashioned house feeling in places than normal. But I think in general the sound works OK. And the Apparat remix at the end is stunning.

Buy tracks from Beatport.com – I do.

Tracklist:

1. Listen To The Drums (Jazzanova / Dixon Remix) – Outlines
2. The Soul Part II – The Revenge
3. Start Something (40 Thieves Remix) – Morten Sorensen
4. Blade Dancer (Dixon Edit) – Tokyo Black Star
5. Kobra Dance (Joris Voorn Interpretation) – Wigald Boning
6. Jump for Joy – Shumi
7. Still Music – Steve Bug / Donnacha Costello
8. Add This Song (Gluteus Maximus Remix) – Gus Gus
9. Solee – Marco Dassi
10. Inferno Jack – Butane
11. Underneath the Wind Machine – Gavin Herlihy
12. Pray (Mike Dunn’s Blackbal Instrumental Mix) – Mina Jackson
13. Modernism Begins at Home – Burger Voigt
14. Pale Horses (Apperat Remix) – Moby
15. Pulsewidth – Aphex Twin

You can download the mix over on my Tumblr site. And if you like this kind of thing you can subscribe to the RSS feed over there.

And you should be able to get it as an iTunes podcast here – although it can take a day or so to update.

Let me know what you think. Unless you really hate it. In which case I’d rather live in blissful ignorance I think.

Then today I was pulling together a mix. I’ve included the Apparat Mix of Moby’s Pale Horses which I love dearly. I tweeted that Apparat was a genius. Then @tbuesing tweeted that I might like this video for an Apparat track. And I did like it:

And it made me think of Wall-e…

http://jonathanfromspotifyruinedyourplaylist.com/ is my favourite website of today. If you don’t know Jonathan from Spotify, he’s the guy who interrupts your listening pleasure with his little adlets.

I’m sure he was forced to do it, so I’m not confident that we should all be picking on him. However, what I love about this site is that I think the level of insults pretty much fit the crime.

But that’s not the reason that I really love the site. The real reason is that it’s driven by Google Docs. That’s how we should all be rolling. Use a Google Spreadsheet as a CMS – that’s how we should be rolling in 2009!

I suggested this to one of our developers a few months ago and he said that I was some kind of fucked-up freakish alien techno-idiot (I think those were his exact words) – having seen this I feel vindicated, marginally.

via: the wonderful It’s Nice That

Following up on from this apologetic, defensive, whiny bitch, blah blah advertising post. I’ve decided to change my view of the world. I’ve decided to stop being such a big twat about it and move along.

It doesn’t matter what you’re called, what kind of agency you’re from, or any of that crap. It’s about what you make. And whether it’s good or not.

I should have known better than to get drawn into a conversation about awards. It’s a trap. It’s a mugs’ game. But awards are addictive. It’s the closest most of us get to a pat on the head from mum and dad. Teacher’s not handing out gold stars any more. But the feeling of acceptance and recognition that creative people feel from awards isn’t far off. It’s hard to ignore their shiny allure. And of course we crow about them loudly when we win.

But we know that’s wrong. It should all be about the satisfaction that we get from making brilliant things. And the impact they have on real people. And clients.

Of the 6 projects I’ve been involved with over the last couple of days only 2 of them could be considered campaigns or in any way ‘advertising’. The others are about creating tools or services, or things that sit at the core of a business. Online systems that become the lifeblood of a company or brand.

And right on cue: Poke just launched a new site yesterday. It’s for Manchester City Football Club. Go take a look. It’s very much the first stage of a massive journey. There have been a couple of minor glitches (and undoubtedly there will be a couple more. As we get nearer to the kick-off of the season the ‘Match Day Centre’ and new ticketing / seat-selector will launch and phase 2 will be complete. But the thing with a project like this is that the work will never be done. There will always be ways to make it better, more involving, more engagaing and more relevant to fans. That’s what makes it so bloody exciting.

This project has a huge cast of designers, project managers, many clients, photographers, developers, writers, content producers, etc. etc. etc. People who’ve dedicated months to defining, designing and building this beast. A big Poke team, but many from elsewhere too.

Interestingly it’s one of those projects that may never win awards. The innovation is subtle. The ‘big ideas’ and principles of the site are tucked away – and they’re things that have been decided, with the client, for the sake of the fans (no display advertising, no paid for video, integrated ticketing / shopping basket). But it works. For real people. In ways that they understand and will actually use.

And awards feel like a distant irrelevance when you see people like Gary make comments like this on fan sites:

We will certainly be the best in England when it comes to our website.

All the people involved in the making of the website should take a bow, you have done a fantastic job!

It makes you remember that the site will touch thousands and thousands of fans on a regular basis. And be a major vehicle in taking the club on their journey to becoming a global entertainment business (and hopefully a winning team). It will sell shirts, and tickets, build their brand, and become a destination for people from around the globe.

Lions schmions. It’s what Gary says that counts.

And perhaps the fact that we’re doing bigger, longer, more involved and complex projects like this is one of the reasosns why digital agencies are only taking home 12/83 Cyber Lions.

As a digital industry we need to make sure that the people who work on these massively important projects get their share of gold stars and pats on the back. They’re the winners in my book :-)

P.S. We will of course be whoring for awards at every possible opportunity.

There are traditional agencies (although they’re the least traditional of the traditional agencies obviously) who are doing incredibly well in awards like Cannes. But let’s not forget one simple thing. THESE ARE ADVERTISING AWARDS!!! Therefore it would seem totally outrageous to suggest that companies whose business is advertising won’t be able to do incredible work in that space. Of course they will. They can apply a bunch of the same principles you’ve always used. Add some executional smarts hired in from a production company and whomp, there it is. Awesome online advertising!

And that’s not to suggest that agencies like CP+B don’t have the capacity to do interesting things beyond traditional online advertising. Things like Whopper Sacrifice prove that they do with bloody bells on.

It’s obvious that the language of the past isn’t going to be the language of the future. And as everything becomes more digital these stupid old distinctions become pointless. And hey, perhaps pure-play digital agencies will become a thing of the past?

But I thought it was advertising that was meant to be fucked? So doesn’t that mean winning lots of advertising awards mean that you’re the most fucked of the fucked?

Sorry that’s my best playground insult battle-weapon launched ;-)

I wouldn’t write off the digital specialists just yet. There’s a bunch of things that we can make and do that are pretty damn exciting. And the fact that they’re increasingly not ‘advertising’ has to be interesting to some folks. Surely?

[Edit: just to clarify - I called Cannes an 'advertising' award because that's how it's perceived by most people - it's entered by companies that do advertising for clients. Many of them are advertising agencies, no? It just so happens that a lot of stuff that's getting awarded is progressive advertising.]

[Edit2: was also interesting to see how different juries would perceive work differently - because everyone has their own agenda. The same work would fare quite differently if it was entered in Design / Titanium / Cyber, for example Fiat Ecodrive appeals to some people in the Cyber Jury because they like to think they can design automobile functionality.]

I enjoyed my workshop in Cannes – it was all about smart, simple, social ideas. I wrote about it here. Thanks to everyone who helped to create chatter around it. Not sure if that’s what did it, but the room was totally full, which was great.

The big twist was that my ’special guest’ was my mum.

I got participants to answer a brief aimed at a target audience of 60ish baby-boomer-tech-savvy individuals. Then I surprised them by getting mum to critique their work over iChat (which thankfully played ball in a live setting).

She was great. They were surprised. And we all learned a lot. Me included.

Yay! Mums!

Poor Dave has had all his camera stuff and a laptop nicked. This is the man who did it. He’s trying to see if the photos might mean anything to anyone. And he’s looking to get the information circulated online, in a ‘here comes everybody‘ kind of a way. So I’m helping.

I’m in Cannes. Sitting in the belly of the advertising beast. There are some great people here. And some terrible people too. There’s some great stuff going on, and some horrific things too.

Anyway I’m doing a workshop tomorrow between 2 and 4 about the power of small, simple, single-minded ideas online. I think it might be nice. I’m looking forward to it.

Here’s the details – written by the Poke NY guys so it’s a bit yankee-y if you know what I mean ;-)

http://www.canneslions.com/festival/event_detail.cfm?event_id=129

But I have a problem. Everyone else who’s doing a workshop seems to have posters, busty girls giving out leaflets and all that jazz. I’m in the program. That’s it. So dear readers I’m asking for a massive favour. If you know anyone in Cannes, or you know anyone who knows anyone who’s in Canees. Can you tell them about my little workshop. It’s only small, and simple. But it might be kinda fun.

And I seriously have a such a special guest that it’s untrue. For real. My special guest is so super-awesome everyone will be totally blown away. I also have the super-smart Brian Morrisey from Adweek helping out.

Please tweet it, email it, blog it, send out smoke signals, whatever. I’d love my little workshop to be full without resorting to promo-chicks and cheap tricks – unless this is considered a cheap trick ;-)

Or, alternatively, Newscorp are talking at the same time.

The DJ History guys are publishing a book of photos from raves back in ‘89.

Very special photos. Featuring very special people. Pre-order it now.

I had the hair, but I wasn’t there.

You know that email that always goes round that says “does anyone have a Nokia charger”? Even at the world’s most prestigious advertising festival same shit still happens.

Here’s me delivering aforementioned Nokia charger. In a style that feels reminiscent of first person shooter. Maybe Nokia should do a game called ‘charger rescue’? It’d be a nice antidote to all of those super violent killing games we’re all so fond of.

I would write more about what’s going on. But I’ve been locked in a room for days. Twitter is the only way I can communicate with the outside world. Send help…