The Slippery Truffle

2012 Year in Review

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 17:15:12 +1000

Year in Review: 2012

2012 was a good year for me. I believe I've had a good run as 2010 was amazing, 2011 was pretty special for many reasons and at the risk of sounding like a lame dad, 2012 will be hard to top thanks to the birth of Mojo.

Why are ou doing this?
Part of the reason for doing these is for my own memory. I blog infrequently and when you're feeling down you struggle to remember the good things that have happened to you. I also find a lot of the stuff I forgot even happened so this is also theraputic.

Personal

Mojo!

4.39am on Aug 3, 2012 my little boy Mojo was released from BETA.
Here's my blog post talking about it in more detail. It's been an amazing 5 months since the birth and I have learned a lot about being a dad and a husband. Still working on both.

Regrets?

I still havent exported the birth video yet.
Ervi has bought a new pram as the one we got is too heavy for the stairs.
I'm dissapointed I didnt take a photo of the first black tar poo.
Always need to spend more time with the little guy
The fact LinkedIn shutdown Mojo's account.

Surprises?

Someone asked me "what was the thing that surprised you the most?" and honestly... I thought you fed babies 3 times a day and changed them around the same. I had no idea it was an every 2hrs deal.
Mojo also likes the feeling of my beard on his face/lips. So it's bad if I shave which is OK with me.
Mojo seems to laugh at anything which I hope is a good sign for things to come.

Upgraded The Kitchen!
As a gift to ourselves (well mainly for Ervi) for having Mojo we upgraded the kitchen. A new dishwasher, oven, stove and rangehood. We splurged and got a Scholtes induction cooktop (or hob as they call them) and self cleaning oven. It was the bottom of their range but still a 6 year warranty can't go wrong.

It did mean getting some new pots and pans but again Ervi had no complaints. It heats so much faster than our old electric cooktop, it's easier to clean and looks awesome.

If you need any more convincing that induction is awesome watch this video of an ice cube glowing red hot thanks to induction.

Visited Belgium

Visiting a new country is always awesome. Going there to present (free flights and accom) is amazing. The downside is I went by myself so the experience wasn't as full.

The hotel I stayed at was Hotel Bloom where every room has a different artwork. It wasn't until I left my room did I discover it was glow in the dark!

I made the most of the 4 days though. A day in Brussels, a day in Ghent and Brugge and a long trip to the Tin Tin (Herge) Museum. I recommend anyone who is even the smallest of Tin Tin fans to track this place down. It's a bit of a trek on the train but worth it. Oh and don't buy any souveniers from the store. It was cheaper in the airport! Oh and the museum has a no photo policy which is stupid.

I bought so many chocolates/trufffles for Ervi I gave myself a sore arm from carrying them. I ate more fries than I needed to and also visited a few castles like a real tourist.

Oh and I opted for the 1 euro (rubbery) waffle which was terrible. It was surprisingly hard to find a place that wasnt touristy selling waffles.

I did make a 1 hr trip to visit the Atomium ended in fail when I arrived 5 minutes after the doors closed. It does look awesome though. It's Belgium's Eifel tower.

Brugge was nice (I need to watch "In Brugges" again) but Ghent was much more friendly. I'm glad Belgium had other things to offer other than beer. As a non-drinker a lot of the tourist recommendations didn't interest me.

The biggest lesson? Travelling with just an iPhone for your travel photos sucks. So many photo opportunities missed because I opted to save space.

Went to the Most Epic Kids Party

Tom & Lindsey's little girl Shae had a "Welcome Party" at Tom's parents place. It was off the chain awesome. Pony ride, jumping castle, petting zoo, pinball machines, awesome food, a pool and 4-player Daytona.

Our Place Flooded

Well the neighbours flooded and we got dragged into it. I had to move everything we own from the ground floor up into the 2nd floor. Add to that Mojo and we were living like hoarders for 10 days while stuff dried out.

The good news is my carpet is now properly cleaned for the first time in 6 years. No wonder the water was so dirty.

Made Some Art

For the Soap Monster Art Show I got my art skills out and created this piece called Skulltastic. It's a carry on from my 100's of Dick and Balls piece from a few years ago.

The TV Show I Was On Aired

After filming in Dec 2011 the show aired in Sept 2012. Do or Die. We were episode 3 and one of the more organised and nice companies. If you're in Australia you can probably watch it on iView. I ended up coming across as "the reluctant boss" but that's much better than Episode's 1's Goldfish guys who came across as assholes. The show also helped me appreciate what I have, I can no drink tap water without worry and I realise I need to lead more in my currentl role. Seperating the "boss" from "friend" is hard sometimes.

No autographs please!

Was Interviewed for Good Game

Although I dont think it actualled aired. but I did get to see Hex's desk, sit on the RAGE couch and visit the tiny Good Game set.

Scored 187 in Bowling

After talking up my skills for a week before the Bootcamp bowling sessions I was able to back up my skills with an equal PB (I scored 187 late last year in LA so this counts as my Southern hemisphere PB then). It helps to also win with the mind games! It's the only sport I'm better than average at so I had to make it count.

My Two Year Long Junk Mail Experient Ends

Control year was 2011 with no junk mail sticker and I ended up with 15kgs of junk mail. 2012 had the no junk mail sticker and I got 1kg of junk mail. Clover Moore you need to do something about the junk mail in Sydney.

Bought a Kindle

After losing Brain Rules on the plane I decided to get a Kindle. The cheap $99 version so I could read books and that's it. It has been a fantastic purchase and one I regreat not doing earlier. I've read more books this year (2.5) than in many and bought several more (I bet most Kindle owners are like me buying more than they actually read)

Read in 2012
Superfreakanomics (half so far)
Brain Rules
Baby Brain Rules

On the to read list:
Tales From Development Hell
Trust me, I'm Lying
Fight Club
Yakusa
Mud Sweat and Tears
The Architecture of Happiness
A bunch of Philip K Dick stories

Organised & Hosted a Movie Premiere
And raised $4025 dollars in the process. I reached out to the producers of Indie Game: The Movie and asked why they were not screening in Australia. I then offered to help organise purely out of the fact I wanted to see the film myself. 2 months and 50+ emails later I had a copy in my hands and was set to host the screening. A very helpful contact at Adobe helped me pay for the screening and location fees and the free pizza so all the money raised was able to go to the Variety charity.

The first screening sold out in less than 5 hrs. So I put another screening on that was 3 times larger and it was 70% sold in the end. I can't recommend Eventbrite more as it is an amazing service. They even have a mobile app to help you with check-ins and ticket redemption. The event was a lot of work but paid off and the fact the film was amazing made it all the sweeter.

Game Jam 2012

I didn't really participate in Game Jam 2012, I just helped facilitate and I was up on stage at the end aswering questions as part of the judging panel. I did miss out on a Game Jam shirt which was probably the biggest dissapointment (This is due to the fact I also didn't get a lanyard). I met some great people (wil try and hire one or two), the soap teams (all 3 of them) kicked ass as usual and the whole event was 5 times bigger than last year.

I look forward to Game Jam 2013 being closer to home and being part of it again in some capacity.

Let Bannerblog slowly die
A combination of less submissions, time poor and sponsorship ending meant I spent less time updating Bannerblog. All my other editors were even more MIA which meant the site has been in neglect. 2013 will be a year I pull my finger out and give it some love and a new focus.

Visited E3

Well not really :)

Bought a GoPro2

And like everyone with the big GoPro plans haven't done much. I was able to film Mojo's birth with the headmounted camera. I have first person footage of me cutting the umbilical cord!

Bought a new camera: Sony RX-100
I thought I'd be smart and get it in the USA and sent over. Not realising Kogan has it cheaper in AUD?! This was to ensure Ervi and I get good shots of Mojo without the hassle of the larger DSLR. So far it's been a solid point and shoot. The manual control helps a lot too even in video mode. Here's a video of Mojo playing the toy piano.

Got an Iphone 5
After 2 years with the 4 (well 1.5 years thanks to LZ keeping the phone when it was accidently delivered to him by mistake) I was due for an upgrade. It's faster and lighter but was there really that much demand for an extra inch of screen? It' just makes it harder to hold with one hand and cover the screen's realestate with your thumb. I have yet to need or use Siri.

Visited Vivid
Watched Amon Tobin
Saw Shane Smith from Vice talk via skype
Saw the guys from Threadless and We Are Handsome talk
And generally walked around Vivid. For me Vivid has easily become a top 3 event each year for the Sydney scene.

Bought a Lot of Stuff on Kickstarter

14 projects backed and only 2 digital deliveries. I'm expecting all the 2012 orders to come in 2013 very late. I actually refunded out of the LIFX after reading this.

Won a pair of headphones!

They had a flash game to play and I used my flash knowledge to win these set of Urbanears from a Big M promo. I beat the previous 8 year old with the top score by 1!

Games Played

See a full breakdown of my gameplay here on Raptr. But I was able to fit in a lot of gaming this year. Now with Mojo that will be cut down considerably.

Note: I get a LOT of free games through work and paid for about 3 of these games total.

Far Cry 3 (My Game of the Year)
May Payne 3
Spec Ops: The Line
Mark of the Ninja
Deadlight
Trails Evolution
Mass Effect 3
Rayman Origins
Journey (The only time I turned on my PS3)
Shadow of Colossus (OK, the second time)
Halo 4
Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD
Fez
Minecraft
Dark Souls
Skyrim

Watched Some Movies
There needs to be a Raptr for movies!

The RAID (My movie of the year)
TED
21 Jump St
Skyfall
Looper

Professional

Spoke in Belgium

I was invited to talk at an advertising event in Belgium, the UBA Trends Day. The theme for the day was Love, Laugh, Live so I themed my talk on play in advertising. The Power Of Play: How advertisers need to remember we were all kids once.

I've only been this nervous before when I spoke in NY but I was one of the last speakers and the crowd was small. This time I was right in the middle and one of only several speakers on the day. It went well although it was hard to compare against a professional speaker like Martin Lindstrom who was the headliner.

I also met Christophe and Benoit from Innate Motion who were quite interesting as both people and the work they do.

A big thanks to Nathalie and the UBA team for inviting me.

Judged Adfest in Thailand

Had a great time (as you do in most judging trips) in Pattaya. We went down "Walking Street" with Justin from The Monkeys and Cam from Droga5. I was punched in the nuts from a "dancer" thanks to Cam. I think that joke cost him $30.

Went to SXSW!
I actually have no photos from the trip right now. This makes no sense. SXSW was great although I arrived a day late (United's flight left early and left us stranded) and then had to leave on the last day to make the flight to Adfest.

We won Agency of The Year. Third time in a row

It's hard not to feel special about this one. These awards which encompass the entire agency are special to us.

It's actually our 5th year in the finals for Adnews. Proud of that fact too and I feel we're getting better every year.

B&T Runner-Up for the 4th time!

Not sure what we did to B&T but hey finalist is still good right?

Thumbzilla on Amazon Store

Did you know there is a specific Android store just for people with Kindles? I didn't until mid last year. When we ported our little test game Thumbzilla over to Android we also decided to spend the extra few hours putting it on the Amazon store. Lucky we did as the game has been in the top 15 in the paid store since Sept 2012. We were "featured" once and it seems to have stuck around.

Then once Xmas hit we've been selling over 1,000 copies a day! It's addictive checking the stats each morning to see how you're going. The lesson here is to leverage every available avenue no matter how small it seems. We've sold 50x more copies on Amazon than on Google Play and 10x the copies on the iOS app store.

I can only imagine how it would have sold if the game was really good.

Diggin' Dogs

Our first AAA mobile game was released Feb 9, 2012. After many months of waiting and many more of development Diggin' Dogs was here. We had big dreams, we set up profit share agreements and got ready to become super stars.

So much so we even made a Diggin' Dogs cake to celebrate the launch!

But the game didn't take hold. The reviews were good, the ratings high and we were unfairly compared to "Where's My Water" but we didn't mind, it was the #1 app at the time. Yet the sales dropped and it's been trickling in ever since. We still made some money but nothing worse bragging about. I still say "we're one Kim Kardashian tweet away from fame" which is that the game is good, it's just people don't know about it. We're looking to port to Android which may give it a second wind.

The upside is we learned a lot about how to release, craft and polish a mobile game. Chillingo had it's pros and cons but we're wiser now than we were before and have Chillingo to thank for that.

36 Faces of Facebook

I'm quite happy with how this one turned out and the reception. I consider these like "industry jokes" and Slideshare is the open mic. What I liked about this one was JV did the copy and it turned out better than I expected. I don't think people realise the amount of internal reviews we do for something like this or how hard it is to stay focused and actually put one out.

Got a 3d printer

And what did we print? 3d skulls of course. Lot's more experiments to go and linking it up with the Kinect for 3D scanning but the Makerbot was the ultimate boys toy last year.

Soap's 10th Birthday Party

On March 21, 2002 we walked in ASIC in the city, waited in line and registered the company. Well actually we didn't fill the form out properly and had to make adjustments at the counter but then after a few tweaks handed the paper over with the $120 and we had a company.

10 years later, we've evolved and thankfully stronger than ever.

We celebrated by jet boating around Sydney Harbour and had a private party for Soaperheroes at Deus Ex Cafe with a magician. (Which was much cooler than it sounds)

We took all the staff through a very quick "history of Soap" which was more just a collection of funny photos and stories from the previous ten years. From our first client, to the time we got paid in cash from an "escort agency" to do their site.

It was a very personal time for me as I have changed a lot in those 10 years and Soap has pretty much become who I am. I'm not Ashley Ringrose but "Ash from Soap". Which is probably why I take so much of the business personally. Separating myself from the business emotionally for decisions is almost impossible.

Working with 50 people is like having 50 best friends, 50 kids and 50 girlfriends at the same time. I am Bill Paxton in Big Love.

SOYA Awards

We were asked to judge and mentor a section of SOYA for the interactive and gaming section.

Client Wins
ING Direct: Our first proper finance client and a client that has trusted us in so many ways that we're doing all sorts of work for them beyond digital.

2x Major wins in LA: We won two big clients in LA what, due to NDA's, we can't talk about. One of them we were pitching against the big guns and the end result will really boost the LA teams profile.

Lots of Memorable Work

A bumper year for work in terms of scale and consistency across Sydney and LA.We did this without killing the team with crazy hours, we released a lot of self initiated work too and produced everything from small social campaigns to filming a video content series around the world.

LIFE TODO UPDATE
Well only #39 was ticked off this year. Make a baby!
Considering I've had this list for almost 10 years I think it's time to start ticking more off!
I have booked in #15: Do a fun run already so that is going down!
#40: Finish a GTA can be ticked off with GTAV too!

1: Travel to Japan
2: Feature on Boingboing.net
~~3: Write an article for a magazine~~
~~4: Write an article for an online mag~~ (Smashing Mag)
~~5: Speak at a conference in a foreign country~~ IG Digital Day Sao Paulo
~~6: Do the Bridge climb~~
7: Bungee Jump
8: Sky Dive
9: Snorkel the Great Barrier Reef (I snorkelled in Bunaken Indonesia but doesn't count)
~~10: Shoot a gun~~
11: Write an article in a newspaper
12: Have a photo of mine published in print (The lady with helmet backwards in Who doesn't count as it was uncredited)
13: Design a CD cover that's sold in stores
14: A credit in a Hollywood film
15: Compete in a fun run
~~16: Own a house/unit~~
17: Surf a wave on a surfboard
18: Visit Easter Island
19: Visit Antarctica
20: Go bobsledding in a foreign country (ice)
~~21: Ski in snow~~
22: See a sumo match in Japan
~~23: Become a Muslim (what we do for love hey)~~
24: Learn Indonesian fluently
25: Be an extra in a film (this would knock off #14 too)
26: Swim with a dolphin
27: Learn to juggle
28: Visit Great Wall of China
29: Visit the Pyramids
30: Do a high dive (10mtrs will do)
31: Attend a Comic Festival in costume
32: Attend a Superbowl
33: Buy something at a big auction. One that requires me to hold one of those big numbers
~~34: Go white water rafting~~
35: Have a book published
36: Produce | Write | Create a TV show
37: Go water skiing
38: Ride an elephant (came very close to this one)
~~39: Make a baby~~
40: Finish one of the GTA's.
41: See a UFC fight live (sit in crowd)
42: Attend a Wrestling Match live. WWF, WWC any will do
~~43: Get married. I better add that one in case Ervi is reading :)~~
44: Visit Chernobyl

Added 2013:
45: Visit Nth Korea before it opens up
46: Visit Cuba before it opens up

47: Create a Top 5 free or paid iOS app/game (USA Store)
48: Have a photo of Mojo become a Meme. (Success kid style)
49: Have a video of Mojo go viral (Charlie bit my finger style)
50: Make a billy cart with Mojo

New Parent Must Buy List

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 21:54:43 +1000

I have now been a parent for 3.5 months and that pretty much makes me an expert right? Sadly no, but I have found that some items we bought have been used everyday while others have hardly been touched. Here's my must buy list for any new parent.

Cloth Nappies x 20

We don't actually use these as nappies. We tried for one nappy but it was just too much hassle. But we use them for everything else. They go under Mojo when he's sleeping to catch any spit and milk. I use them to wipe his face, they go on the change matt to catch any accidents (as it's easier to just throw a cloth nappy in the wash than to wipe down stuff)

Cheeky Wipes
We saw this wipe system at a Baby Show and have never looked back. We still use disposable wipes when traveling on longer trips but trust me when I saw that Cheeky Wipes make cleaning up a DEFCON 5 (all over the legs and feet) baby poop a breeze.

Woombie

This is the easiest swaddle you'll find. When it's 3am and you're still half asleep the Woombie makes getting your little guy swaddled a breeze. In fact you'll start to appreciate zippers more than ever. Also the baby looks funny. It's like a caterpillar or baby body bag

Nose Frida

How do you unblock a baby's nose?! You suck it out! If the idea of giving CPR to a snotty nose freaks you out like it does me then grab one of these Nose Frida snot suckers for $10.

Nappy Bin System

This is a recent purchase but has stopped Mojo's room smelling like a urinal. The Angelcare system we got was just $50. So far has stopped me from building up a massive bag of nappy's which ends up like a Santa sack of smells.

Microwave Sterilise

2 minutes and you're bottles are ready to go. Waiting for something to boil is for chump parents. We use this Avent one (Who new Philips also made baby products!?) but the basic idea of simple microwaveable device vs something more expensive is the way to go.

Thermos

I had no idea a Thermos could keep water so hot for so long. 12-16 hrs later and it's still just as hot yet the bottle is cool to touch. A must have if you formula feed and are traveling. And make sure you get a real Thermos brand not some cheap knock off.

Jumbo Play Matt

Grab one of these jumbo rubber mats for each main room and you'll never have to worry about poop or vomit getting on the carpet again. These mats are quite soft too so kneeling down to play is actually easier too. Compare this to the mats that have puzzle pieces. You spill a drink on that and the liquid goes into the puzzle piece gaps.

Brain Rules for Baby

This baby book made me rethink a lot of things about how to raise a happy and smart baby. No TV, video games or computer screens for Mojo until he's at least 5 now. And trying to keep up 2100 words a day is tough but gives me a goal to make sure I speak to Mojo as much as possible. It's a very interesting read about the science on how baby's brains work and learn.

Be Prepared: A Book for Dads

This book was given to me by the guys at work and they swear by it too. Some great tips for dads.

Night Light

Our's is a Sponge Bob Square Pants lamp but you can mix it up. A portable night light is great for the feeds between 11pm and 5am when you need to see your way around but don't want to wake the baby. You can then carry it to the change area once feeding is done.

Onesies

The coolest piece of clothing. I've spent a small fortune on funny prints from Threadless, funny nerd baby "creeper" items from Think Geek (my fav) or the zippable Wondersuit from Bonds. Three simple clips (or one zipper) and you're ready to change a nappy. The clothes that require you to clip several times or take off completely to change are a waste of time.

Baby Carrier

We call it the Super Suit and it's how mum can walk around the markets and go shopping without the major hassle of a pram in the way. Mojo also prefers to look outwards than be stuck lying down all day. We have the Stokke Baby Carrier which is a lot more complicated than it needs to be but will allow us to put Mojo on our back. The latest Baby Bjorn looks much simpler and softer material too so I suggest you test them both out.

Foldable / Flexi Bath

This is an awesome bath that lets us bathe Mojo where ever we want and it folds up to fit in the car for travel or cupboard for storage. Also it's green (it comes in haps of colours) which is awesome.

Duck Thermometer

Rather than trust my elbow I let the Rubber Duck decide if the water is too hot for Mojo. It lights up green when it's OK. Mojo likes to play with it too.

The Basics
You'll also need the basics (Cot, pram, change table, bassinet, nappy bag, toys) and there's literally hundreds of options for each. I just thought the items above were a little more obscure and might be missed on most "baby buy" lists.

Dad = True

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 20:22:40 +1000

4.39am on Aug 3, 2012 my little boy Mojo was released from BETA.

I filmed the entire thing on a head mounted GoPro Hero2 which is handy as it's kind of a blur now. I remember cutting the umbilical cord (it's very rubbery) and holding Ervi's hand and that's about it.

Mojo was chosen as a name as it's fun, original and if we have a girl Jojo will complete the awesomeness. Yes it's a Powerpuff Girls reference. As silly as the name is I can't see the little guy having a name like "Peter" or "Paul" or something regular like that. If we have another boy I'll go with choice two Milo (yes named after the drink but luckily also means other things like Apple or an ancient Greek wrestler. The name is gaining popularity too.

The best part about having a newborn is taking funny photos. Here's two of my favs

Newborns have no control over their arms or really anything so these are just flukes. Mojo has my wrinkly forehead!

I've also become one of those dads that post nothing but baby photos now. My desktop computer and phone has him as my wallpaper. But as nothing else is happening in my spare time besides feeding and pooping it makes sense.

I've also learnt a few baby hacks in my 7 weeks of being a dad.

Putting him on the washing machine is a simple way to get him to sleep.

Walking up and down stairs also works but is much more tiring :)

If he's being cranky I just crumple a packet of chips or his baby wipes and he goes quiet almost instantly. I can see him later in life at the cinemas being mesmerised when someone is eating a packet of chips behind in.

I've also spent a lot of money buying all the baby items on the list. One that I've really got good value out of is Cheeky Wipes. It makes changing a nappy a breeze.

Oh and a nose frida to suck the boogers out of his nose. Seriously the alternative is not even worth thinking about.

I also love the pram we got.

The Mima Kobi. It's a beast but been great so far. It's also less obvious than a Stokke Explory which every parent seems to have these days. It's the show off item for all parents. I haven't tried to get it in the car and I expect that to be... fun.

I can't wait till Mojo gets old enough to speak, smile, laugh or just respond to me. Right now he's on auto pilot and while rewarding it's when he can laugh at me farting near him (not the opposite) that we'll start to have real fun. I also hope to record some funny "viral" videos and retire on a "Mojo bit my finger" video.

Donations 2011/2012

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 19:59:33 +1000

Even though I earned less this year than previous years I was able to donate more than I ever have to charity. Luckily the$4025 I raised for Variety doing the Indie Game The Movie screening pushed me over the edge. It's kind of cheating as I was able to pay the money as my donation even though I only put in $500 or so of my own money. So in essence I cheated.

I'm still amazed by the amount of spam I receive from charities. It's as if they all share a database because I'm sent junk from charities I've never heard of nor would ever support. They waste a lot of paper too and I can only imagine how many others receive this junk.

Another interesting thing is you get the same message whether you donate $20 or $1000. I expected something like the following;

Donate $20: Thanks for your donation, blah blah
Donate $1000+: Wholly SHIT! Here's a hand written note from someone who works here thanking you for being awesome.
Donate $4000: SRLSY! Here's a photo of the entire office spelling out your first name. It took almost 15 minutes to organise but you're name had 6 characters and we had to pull in the cleaner.

Maybe I'm naive to the number of people who donate large figures and to get the response I'm expecting you have to drop corporate money like $100k. But if you got a scaled response to a scaled donation maybe more people would donate?

Make Your Own Whatever

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 23:48:42 +1000

A small R&D project has gone into BETA. Konstructorz is a merging of a lot of old project art into one platform for kids to creative anything.

I love watching kids create crazy stuff like these Dragon Ball Z type characters from the assets we provided.

There's a weapon and robot set coming soon. With a Mexican inspired monster set and then we'll be done until we grow the audience. That said even without any real pushing we have had 22,000 visitors in just over a month. So it can only go up from here.

The site targets young boys in an effort to have a core audience for advertisers and brands to buy. If we went broad we'd end up with less focus. We're looking to spin off a girlie version of the site once we build an audience.

2011 Year in Review: Personal and Professional

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 09:44:27 +1000

Before I go into my photos, emails and other ways to try and remember 2011 it feels like a small year. Looking back on 2010 2011 pales in comparison. It's also the first year I didn't take many photos so records of the year will be sketchy.

You can also see my other year's reviews here.

2003
2005
2009
2010

Personal Life

I was on a "reality" TV show.
Not strictly a reality TV show (more a doco type show) but they filmed Do or Die with me and 5 other Soapers in the middle of WA. It was "farking hot" but I learned a lot about myself and my team. I signed an NDA so can't reveal more but it'll air in 2012 in April on ABC2

Photos below from Matt who was part of the Soap team.

Had a proper holiday
Ervi and I travelled to Venice, Milan, Madrid and Barcelona Thanks to AirBNB and a strong AUD I had what I think was my best holiday yet. Barcelona blew me away as it wasn't even in my top 20 cities I wanted to visit. We were lucky that our trip to Venice coincided with the Biennale Arte festival.

A bunch of photos here on Ervi's flickr.

And yep I rode a Segway! It was awesome

The view from our rooftop in Barcelona! Thanks AirBNB

Joined Instagram
After joining instagram I then realised that if you want more followers you just follow people. So then proceeded to follow everyone and anything. I grew my followers from 130 to 700 in a matter of days. I also started posting my old faves from Flickr as mydaily life wasn't as photogenic. The interactions with my photos went well, but then I lost interest as I had "gamed" the system and got sick of photos of cats, food and girls getting the most popular photos. I was no better, I posting photos from my zoo visits or kitten photos to bait for hearts.

I was able to post one of my fave photos I've ever taken. This chance find i titles "I SEE BATMAN"

I joined Costco
And tried to make the best of it. I think this is the Housing Commission kid still inside me. Saving money on stuff, counting the cost per 100g but driving 50k there and back to do so :)

I would best describe the situation at Costco in Sydney on the weekend as a "shit fight".

Started Another Blog
I had finally secured areawesome.com and kicked off my world domination with.... bananas!

I have plans to expand but time has been short and this is always a side project just to see if it takes off. Even my link bait women eating a banana hasn't been the click avalanche I was expecting.

Went to E3
I finally attended E3. It was amazing. Even though all the industry veterans I met said "not as good as previous years" it was still amazing to me. Having an exhibitor pass (thanks Activision) meant I got access to anything fast too. As a gamer since the 8bit days this is a dream come true.

I also made sure to "document" the Booth Babes of E3. I just realised I haven't posted any other photos from E3! How sad.

Ouch!

Stayed in Venice, CA with Mike and Nick
Part of this E3 trip was staying with Mike and Nick at their place in Venice. I rode a fixie for the first time down Venice Beach (Garmin stats here). I'm not sure about other people but my balls could not handle the ride on a fixie. I usually stand up to pedal and also roll. No can do on a fixie.

Attended a Transformers Conference
I went to BotCon 2011. Working on the marketing for Transformers: Dark the Moon for Activision and having a conference "near" you was enough reason. Alex drove both of us to Passadena and we rocked out what was a "small" conference to put it nicely. I did get some great photos but I don't think I'll be back for Botcon 2012.

WOW! This was an epic Transformers tattoo piece.

I got an iPhone
After a year of using an Android phone (and being very happy with it as a phone) I got an iPhone so I could raid the App Store. I actually ordered the phone in Oct, it was delivered in November but to the wrong person. Fast forward to April!! and I finally got my phone from this wrong person. It took 6 months, 8 phone calls, 12 emails and a trip to a police but I finally got it back. Hey "wrong person" if you're reading this, you really are a douche.

Also by luck the power button broke just 2 weeks before the warranty expired and got a replacement phone at the Apple store on the spot. So I've essentially got a new iPhone now. I also made sure to tell the Apple "genius" that it's lucky Apple doesn't make cars, because replacing something because of a broken power button just seems silly.

Game Jam 2011
After winning the Global Game Jam Sydney 2010 (no prizes BTW) Soap decided to send another batch of people to the 2011 event. I attended just as a "coach / busy bee" while 4 other Soapers did the 48 hrs. One of the Soap groups had their developer up and leave in the middle of the night while Hendrik and Derek finished their Zombie Sheep game early, with less arguments than my team in 2010 :)

I also helped get some prizes for the comp securing copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops Prestige Edition for all the team members of the winning team. Thanks Arbie & Activision.

Bought a BBQ!
After many years of waiting (for no reason) I went all out and got a Weber Q. I no longer feel jealous when the neighbours fire up their BBQ while I eat wheetbix for dinner. I ended up using the BBQ every day for a good 3 weeks.

This is me BBQing in the park...

Got a new mouse
Goodbye Logitech G5 and hello R.A.T 7. I bought a bunch of these for guys in the office. It's the most customisable mouse but I've hardly customised it. But I like knowing I can. And it looks bad ass

Lanyard Collector
This year was a bumper year for lanyards. I also made my "laynyard collecting" fetish known to others and explained how I treated it like "game hunting". I want to collect them myself not have someone give me one.

Played some Poker
I played 2 matches in AU with the Soap team and came 2nd in my first match. This then set me off and I started playing on the Xbox constantly to skill up and then the next game I folded to death coming 4th but I never even really contended a hand. I then played in LA and came 3rd (I think)

Lee with his winnings from match #1

Ko with his winnings from match #1 in LA

Too many Games
2011 was a huge year for gaming and for the first time I had my games than I could play. I still have Dark Souls, MW3, Saints Row 3, Ace Combat, Rage and Assassins Creed Revelations to finish. Phew.
(Update: Since initially writing this in Dec I have finished Rage and ACR)

And that was it for 2011 on a personal level.

------------------- Professional ---------------------------

In terms of work this year it was actually a pretty strong year. Both on a business level and the individual projects I was able to have an influence on.

Awards
Adnews Agency of the Year & Finalist in the B&T Agency of the Year.
We're still Adnews Agency of the Year until Feb next year when the new winners are announced and we were also in the top 5 for B&T Agency of the Year. B&T also had us down for Employer of the Year too.

We didn't win anything "agency level" at B&T although we did pick up their Digital Campaign of the Year for Pac-Man and 5X picked up Media Campaign of the year. I guess the judges focussed on the other parts of the entry...?

We also won a bunch of other awards mainly for for PAC-MAN and 5X.

World's Biggest PAC-MAN
A combination of lucky brief and simple solution made this my fave project of the year. While no One Show or Cannes glory, I'm happy with the non industry response. Traffic is still solid with 3.4 million visitors in just under a year. Not bad for a campaign with no media spend at all.

We even got tweeted by Alyssa Milano (call me!)

Oh and our first Guinness World Record now! Woo

5X Mutant Gum
5X started in Nov 2010 and it all finished May 2011. It turned out better than I was expecting in some ways and not as good in others. Working with Alex Houghton at OMD on this (he came to us with the idea) was the best media agency experience I have ever had... by a long way. It was also great to see a client as excited by an idea as us.

Global Resistance
This was another project we started in 2010 only to finish in 2011. A companion game for a AAA console release. Dream brief! We pitched and won with a multi-player version of Risk with a PVP tied to a AAA console release! Global Resistance was born.

While the game only reached 63% of our initial scope it turned out well. Working with (and not for) Insomniac Games was pretty amazing too. I think it's the most laughs we've had on a conference call. If I wasn't for Michael Kordahi at Microsoft I'd say they were the most "kindred spirits" Soap have as clients.

I remember in the pitch Insomniac Games asking if we "would be able to keep the enthusiasm up over the long development period" and I'm happy to say we did this with spades!

Diggin' Dogs
Diggin' Dogs is finally finished. Soap's first real AAA iOS game. My hand in this has been minimal. When we wanted to change from steam punk styled worms digging into a brain (that was our original direction) I just said "make it POP CAP CUTE".

The game has been an R&D labour of love for over a year now and something that's been hanging around the office since the 2007 "game in a day" challenge I set! Here is the initial prototype.

Will we make a shed load of cash? I hope so

The reviews have been great so far and I hope we can continue to support the game with the revenue it brings in.

Thumbzilla
We launched another iOS game which had been in R&D for quite a while. Thumbzilla was released in Dec with a soft launch. No trailer, no reviews and the game is 80% there. We're working on a new update and we'll use that 100% game and a trailer to properly launch the game. We actually had the name "Fingerzilla" on the app store but then let that lapse. (you get 6 months) only to see another developer release a Fingerzilla game, which was a hit. The developers name was "Inert Soap" as if it was some cruel joke about procrastination on ideas.

The game is built in Unity 3D so we're looping to port it to android which is much harder for Diggin' Dogs.

Note: Do NOT Google/Bing Thumbzilla as it's also the name of a porn site. Just go direct to Thumbzilla in the App Store and buy it :) This can't be helping sales :)

Got a PB at bowling at the Soap Birthday Party
No more lawn bowls this year we went with Ten Pin to celebrate our 9th year anniversary.

I got a personal best (180) and was able to settle the who is better between myself and Dave. Vote in the poll here about my performance. I also beat Dave again 3 months later in the northern hemisphere when I was in LA with a new PB of 187.

So I'm appointing myself the best bowler at Soap. Brad Coen, the only person to beat me, if you're reading this I want a rematch!

Below is me getting the LA symbol wrong at the Midwown Bowling alley

Soap's Youtube Challenge
I had the idea that we'd create a Yotube challenge to get staff creating content to win cold hard cash.

First to 20,000 views = $500
First to 50,000 views = $1,000
First to 100,000 views = $2,000

Anyone could enter and my entry below had over 100,000 views in 2 days and it took the steam out of everyone else's sail. There were complaints but I scripted, cast, shot, edited and graded this video myself so was within the rules. Never under estimate the power of boobs.

I've donated the 1st and 2nd prize back for someone to win which currently is still up for grabs. Sam's UFO entry is close though!

Shared Our Secrets on Slideshare
Our Facebook Brand Pages for Dummies guide was launched on Ad Age and then took off. It's since received 89,000 views and we've seen the techniques used everywhere. We didn't coin "link bait" but we certainly made it a popular term. One downside to this has been we've had two clients take over a Facebook page we were running for them and use this as the bible.

What inspired us to share so much was that we had seen other agencies in Australia copying our "techniques" and we thought we'd share the secrets with everyone.
Lame claim to fame: Before sharing this presentation there was very little use of "like this post/status if" but we changed that. "Like Baiting" is now a drug that most FB brand pages are addicted to.

Facebook Brand Pages For Dummies

View more presentations from Soap Creative

Lynx Rules of Rugby
I had nothing to do with this piece but it was our first truly viral video. Yes it has babes but that's no different than having roller skating babies or singing cats. You play to what works for your target.

It was also banned many weeks later by the ASB. Lucky they didn't see our Cornetto clip from 2009!

Spoke at ADMA Digital Days
Carlson Choi (client from Namco) and I spoke in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney about Gamification. I had originally suggested Rajat from Bunchball but he was busy.

This wasn't my most prepared talk and the first time I've had to share the stage with another talker so the flow wasn't great. We got an average rating of 3.5 / 5 in the reviews so some people got worth out of it.

Soap's New Site
Design started in 2009 and it was finally launched in 2011. It already needs to be destroyed and redone for many reasons but it's done. And true to predictions I'm still the one updating it the majority of the time. The agency website is an interesting beast.

Social, Social, Social!
After the success of 100 Days of Summer for Foxtel the social floodgates seemed to open. We grew the social team from 1 to 4 in that time and brought on several new brands through the social gate. Personally social (read: Facebook) is like pop corn. You aren't left very filled at the end of it and it can get stale quickly. But we have been able to do some interesting things and the social foot in the door has opened up clients to other digital work. View our Social Media campaigns here.

I really enjoy being Kronjob on Xbox Australia with Jonothan keeping up my alter ego. It's the one profile where I get to be me. Oh that and responding to posts as Bubble O' Bill. Always a great way to get a laugh.

We also billed over half a million on Facebook ads which has been a real learning experience unto itself. The biggest learning was how to sell it to clients. Media agencies don't focus on results (they can't as they are usually pretty bad) so they focus on the sell.

Note: the same amount of sell and reporting is needed for a $3000 spend as it is for a $100,000 spend. No wonder media agencies are lazy, doing a good job just doesn't matter.

Famewhores!
We worked with a few celebs this year.

Ken Jeong reading my ADR scripts for the Hangover 2 iPhone game was funny even if only 2-3 lines made it into the final game. I need to put these up somewhere as they are LOL funny.

The "5 Gum voice over guy" did some extra Soap lines for us on the side. Oh and my voice mail message.

Kate Ritchie from Home and Away wished us a Happy Birthday

The Jacob's Creek team met Curtis Jobling who designed Bob The Builder! Here's Brad with the man below. Jealous

We Made a Billboard
To celebrate Bubble O Bill Facebook hitting 1 Million fans we created a bill-board (sic) that was just down the road from our office. It was meant to be up for 4 weeks and ended up staying for 3 months.

We made Grassy Street Art
I had little to do with this one but I was able to help it get on Wooster Collective and it's another interesting "non digital" project we did in 2011. Lots of photos here.

Soap Cross Fit
This has been the surprise of the year with the Cross Fit Personal Training becoming a huge success. Around 17 Soapers do this twice a week. After doing a few sessions of Your Shape Fitness and feeling totally knackered I have wisely decided to avoid killing myself at Cross Fit and will just do Your Shape via Kinect like the nerd I am.

Got a new Boardroom Table!
Gone with the old, water damaged table and in with the new custom built ping ping table. Even if you don't play Ping Pong it's a great looking table.

Pitches & New Biz
We capped off the last week of work with 2 new biz wins. We won ING Direct and the digital work for The Avengers for Disney Australia. I've been an ING customer since it first launched and it was surprising to them to see my customer ID # was so low. This wasn't agency BS I really did jump in fast.

2011 on a whole was a solid year for new biz with Ferrero coming on board with Tic Tac, Nutella and Kinder Surprise. Adding to the long list of brands that I use every day and happen to also work for. Seriously all we have to do is work for Milo again and there isn't a brand I use/eat/play regularly that we don't work for.

Jacob's Creek for Pernod Richard was the biggest win and has lead to a lot of interesting work. We've even done a fair amount of print work too! The big idea we won the pitch with will launch in 2012 and that is looking amazing.

No Rob
This was the first full year in which the other Soap co-founder Rob wasn't here. It wasn't as hard as I expected but his presence was missed.

5 Simple Ways to Make Facebook Better for Brands

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:48:08 +1000

There's no doubt that brands have drive the success of Facebook in the last year. Every major campaign is plastered with a Facebook URL and brands are pouring millions into advertising to grow their fan base and reach people who would never normally visit their boring brand websites.

But with all that support and money being spent I can't help but feel Facebook needs to up it's game to give brands a much better product. Sure for the users it's fine, people seem to enjoy the sub standard photo feature while Flickr cries in the corner. But for brands and those spending millions we expect a little bit more.

Here's my list on how to make Facebook better for brands. Anyone have other suggestions? I'll check in with my team and see if we can format this into a sexy Slidehare pres which have been quite popular lately.

1: Better Analytics
While Insights has been upgraded it is still pretty sub par. Google Analytics is the base standard these days and those with Omniture will be used to even more. Facebooks insights are poor in comparison. What's worse is this recent trend to consolidate all global pages into one mega page. This is a nightmare for region wanting their own little slice of stats.

Simple fixes for the insights team:
- Provide a way to segment all data by countries, gender, ages. Don't make this available in some 199 tabbed excel doc we want a dashboard for this
- Up to date data. Not 7 day delayed data. Real ltime would be great but we'll settle for next day and then 72hr locked in.
- Ability to add notes: Started campaign, TVC launched. A way to flag when a significant event happened to give the reports context.
- Mobile vs Browser stats: Seems a pretty simple stat to provide.
- Top users: (Privacy permitting) give us a list of the top users based on their interaction with the brand over 7, 28, 90, 365 days
- Let me specify a range greater than 89 days.
- Unique vs Total: Just show this basic stat on tab views.

2: Better Editing Options
Posted a typo to a post. Shit, do we delete it? We can't edit it..... argh! CODE RED.
Why not allow brands to edit posts easily and community managers around the world will have less worry lines.

3: A Better Spam Filter
I feel sorry for some of the larger pages (2 million+ fans) as they are smashed with porn and scam spam 24/7. While the wall allows you to choose what is seen by default online, on mobile it's all posts and no way to filter. This becomes a real mess.

Also there needs to be a way to ban pages from tagging your brand in a post too.

4: Let us upload a tiny profile pic. FFS
It's a little bit hit and miss right now creating a profile pict that works large and small. Why not let us just upload a 50x50 image? Do you not trust us?

5: Better Photo App
The easiest would be "be more like Flickr" but some simple fixes
- Let me edit a photo by uploading a new one in it's place
- Allow users to easily see bigger images. 720x720 isn't big enough sometimes

Seriously though we'd all just settle but better insights. It's also reduce the need for all the 3rd party apps and services that just present the same data in slightly better ways.

Donations, Money & Stuff

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:11:36 +1000

I have just finished my tax and reconciled all my expenses and earnings for the year and it's that time again to reflect on the money side of life. What's interesting is I spent a LOT of time thinking, talking and signing papers about money in 2011. Having two business partners leave a business is a very paperwork intensive situation. If you've ever bought property and think the paper work is overwhelming for a mortgage then never go into business.

So just over a year ago I shared some insight into my donations. This was partly to inspire people to donate more and partly narcissistic. But isn't blogging about yourself all about that?

Note: It's actually quite easy to donate when apply rules or siphon off money from you're usual spending.

2011 was a big year for donations for me. I think the combination of the usual guilt I feel (I stole $40 from the MS Read-A-Thon while a teen and still feel guilty), the whole Occupy Wall Street BS and the fact I had so many meetings with bank managers and lawyers on the business side had me feeling in need of a karma boost. Factor in I earned less last year than last year I jumped from donating 2% of my earnings to just over 6%. I was aiming for 5% but clients had a busy year with walks, fights,and moes that needed funding.

Break down from 2004 is below. I need to contact the ATO to get my data from 1995 onwards, although when I worked at McDonald's in '95 I don't remember giving to charity. But from '99 when at Kinkos I had regular donations.

One thing I did learn is that you need to be disciplined in keeping track of all your donations. Some charities are great and give you nice receipts for the end of year tax time while others you can easily miss their single, badly formatted email and that's it.

Charities I support regularly
MSF

UNCHR

Oxfam

WWF

Amnesty

Charities supported in 10/11 year
Beyond Blue
Cancer Council
Cantoo
Movember
Tassie Devil
Barnardos

So my message to anyone who reads this is; In 2012 donate more and buy less stuff.

Dragon Age 2 Review

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 10:29:57 +1000

I did a trade in yesterday and picked up Dragon Age 2. It was between this and Fight Night and I thought the guys in the office would rather play this in their spare time.

Here's a very quick review.

For context: I have played and really liked Mass Effect 2 but never played Dragon Age 1. I was a huge Final Fantasy Fan on the PS1 and I'm a fan of the Assassins Creed series. This is my gaming creds.

What I liked

- I bought it for $28 with the trade in

- It has Dragons in it (well I've killed one large one in the first 9 hrs)

- It hasn't crashed on me

- It's fun to totally smash big groups of people and the battle mechanics are enjoyable.

What I didn't like
- The graphics are ho hum. Made worse by the lack of detail in the environments. You play games like Uncharted 2 which poke you in the eye with awesome and then you get this which feels blocky, boring and generic.

- The voice acting is fucking terrible. In IGN's review they said it was "one of the hall marks of a Bio Ware game is that the voice acting is great". These are the same people who think the Transformers gave a moving performance. The voices either lack any emotion are cliché and ruin the experience. It's like everyone has aspergers syndrome. But that's being kind. They have "Keanu Reeves Syndrome"

If anyone disagrees then go play with your dog in your house and tell me that the simple acting task of "say something nice to your dog" is a complete fail for the main voice actor (male)

- To make the voices worse there is a lot of boring ass talking. I've started to skip all of it. Yay for B button. I realised I listened to all of Assassins Creeds story points but 5% of these.
Bu... Th.... Is.... wh..... That's all I hear now as there is just too much junk talk to pad this game out.

- The missions are boring! Assassins Creed 2 and Brotherhood had so many mission types you really felt like you were on an adventure. FPS break things up by letting you drive a tank of fly in a robot suit. Final Fantasy gave us little mini games but Dragon Age 2 gives you the same shit over and over. Just bigger enemies. I'm 9 hrs in (speedy 9 hrs as I skipped most of the dialogue) and all I've done is attack and collect. A band of kick ass delivery guys picking up shit from one area and giving it to some random NPC for 50 silver coins. We need a run fast button as 25% of the game is walking around to the next story point.

What's worse is all the levels look the same. IGN said this and I thought "that's because they are looking for it, it can't be that bad" but it is. It's a copy and paste job and get any level designer from Bio Ware drunk and they will tell you. "Oh yeah I dialled that fucker in for shizzle" (note Bio Ware people swear and use hip hop references when drunk)

The more I think about it the more I don't like the game. My hopes were too high and I think Mass Effect with it's sci-fi story had much more latitude to do interesting things with the story and the mission types.

Donations

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 00:49:53 +1000

I'm doing my tax for last year (yes I'm 7 months late as usual) and realised I have not updated my donation chart since 2009.

I dropped in the 08/09 year but came back in 09/10. I was actually way down until I found a random receipt for Fred Hollows foundation for a one off donation I did. If you don't keep track them them it's so easy to forget.

When I look at these donations as a % of my overall earnings it's pretty sad. Here's the chart for the 09/10 year

It's around 2% which is insignificant. I'd feel worse if I had spent more on drugs or alcohol but no, the guilt I feel which fuels my donations is my vice. Which I believe stems from when I did the MS Read-A-Thon as a kid and kept $40 of the money I raised and spent it at Time Zone. This has weighed on me for many years.

So I'm looking to boost my donations for the 10/11 year and I want charity suggestions. Nothing religious please but suggestions. Or should I put it all into the micro funding sites like Kiva?

I currently donate to the following on a regular basis
MSF

UNHCR

Oxfam

WWF

Amnesty

Fred Hollows

One thing I am annoyed about is the amount of emails and junk mail I receive from the charities I do donate to. Oxfam print a huge amount of stuff that I tossed into the bin every month. I've told all the charities that if I receive any junk mail they will stop receiving a donation. Only one has failed so far.

If you want to donate more to charity try looking at new ways to give. You'll be surprised how easy it can be.

Bananas Are Awesome

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 20:50:52 +1000

I've started a new blog network called AreAwesome.com. This is the second attempt after I sold my WTFcostumes site. This one will use subdomains to split all the different sites.

I've started with a pet project Bananas.areawsome.com which is a collection of funny bananas or bananas with drawings on them.

I also did the sexy women eating bananas gallery. Yep link bait but why not.

I doubt bananas will be a huge draw card like the costumes were but costumes.areawesome.com is coming.

2010: A Personal and Professional Wrap Up

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 12:10:50 +1000

I find these end of year wrap ups very therapeutic. These are more for me than anyone else so if you're expecting something insightful below don't read on. It's more of a diary entry with the facts laid out. No real reflections or insight.

Looking back on a year (like 2003) is strange and fun at the same time. Here's the previous years for those interested.

2003 2005 2009

2010 was probably the weirdest year I've had professionally. While 2009 was the biggest personally, as I got married, this year was definitely a year of professional.... upheaval. I spent a long time in meetings with lawyers and signing documents and generally frustrated at how the "system" works. My own laziness and gullibility cost me a lot of money because the "system" doesn't run on common sense but balogna.

But lets concentrate on the good stuff...

Personal Life

I Entered the Red Bull Flugtag
This is one of those "Oh wouldn't that be cool to do but I never will" things. Luckily this year I was the pilot of team Fail Whale in this year's Red Bull Flugtag, Sydney. A big thanks to Robbie, Mark and Aaron for building the craft. And Brad for being the Jelly fish on the day. We were the only entry without wings and we still came 15th! The only other agency that entered Visual Jazz Sydney came 38th!

That's my feet in the photo below. I highly recommend entering the comp if it's on in your area.

I didn't have a costume as I was in the whale.

A New Car

After surviving quite well without a car for 12 years in Sydney we now have a new car. A brand new VW Golf. It's officially my wife's car as I was content to just use the fantastic GoGet service but as Ervi only just got her licence they won't let P's use the cars.

This new car resulted in the need to clean out our garage. Which was filled with empty computer boxes, filing cabinets, tyres, and junk from years of hoarding and collecting for Soap. Lots of visits to the bins, a truck pick up for Soap junk and a shit load of sweeping resulted in a usable lock up garage.

Having driven just 5 times in the last 12 years I feel like a learner again. When we filled out the insurance policy it asked "how many accidents have you had in the last 5 years" I put 0. It never asked a more appropriate question of "How many times have you driven in the last 5 years" which I also would have answered 0. Even Youii who's whole campaign is about asking the right questions didn't ask this. Fools!

The VW Golf is great but I still secretly long for the GTI or R. But I've always been one to live under my means and the nice little Golf suited Ervi's budget.

This was the odometer after the Soap Boot Camp trip to hunter valley. It ended on this as I parked to drop people off at the office.

My Best Presentation Experience: Ignite Sydney

After posting a joke about Google Trends in 2007 I was able to convert this into a presentation for Ignite Sydney. Again I pandered to what I thought the audience would want to hear about with a crowd pleaser topic. This is as close as I'll get to doing stand up, which is another life dream.

The talk is now on Youtube. I bluffed a few screens by going off script but I did well with the audience laughing. If only my voice didn't sound so weird. Ignite is one of the best nights for me, and it's pretty much free (I donated $5 at the entrance).

Here are my slides for those interested.

Ignite Sydney: Google Trends

View more presentations from Ashley Ringrose.

Below was my fav talk from the night. Again movies and psychology. You can't go wrong.

I probably wont be able to do another Ignite talk as they are trying to mix up the speakers and this was my 2nd talk. But I'll try to convince someone from the Soap team to talk in Feb 2011. The 15 seconds per slide and 20 slide limit is liberating.

Travel: USA Trip #7 was awesome
This time with Ervi. Most of my other trips have been partner free. Which is great for work but boring otherwise. The trip was for the Ad Age Digital conference talk and I added a personal holiday to the end of it.

This trip we visited Las Vegas. I had no idea it was so close to the Grand Canyon as I would have ventured there also had I of known.

Saw the LOVE show by Circ De Soleil

and the Blue Man Group.

Braved the crowds to see the Tim Burton show in MOMA NYC,

ate at Shake Shack,

stumbled into two art shows Mr Brainwash in NYC (we saw Exit Through the Gift Store that same night and the penny dropped who this artist was)

David Choe in LA

did the Top of the Rock

ventured to Brooklyn for the first time.

visited the Getty Center

and the Disney Concert Hall in dirty downtown LA.

Travel: Visited New Orleans!
I was voted onto the ANDY jury for 2010 (an awesome achievement unto itself) and like always met some amazing people and saw some great work. And as always was annoyed at how easily great work can miss out in awards due to political agendas or ignorance.

I even got to say hi to Shepard Fairey who was on the jury. His manager sent us all a hand pulled print. This hangs in the LA office now.

And got to go to a Jay Z concert and sit in a VIP area (fuck yeah!) and got very close to Beyonce
Yes, I seem much cooler than I really am.

Travel: Went to Brisvegas

I judged the Brisbane Art Directions club digital work. Didn't get to see much of Brisbane but did get to go to the video game Mana Bar. And saw Zero Punctuation guy at the door.

Travel: Went to Melbourne for an indie Games Conference

Also realized that indie devs need to suck it up and sell out more sometimes.

Made a good friend with a card carrying Mormon

Josh came over for a 3 month internship from the USA and we had a great time. He'll be joining the Soap LA crew in 2011 which is great. I say card carrying Mormon as I thought that was a figure of speech but it's true, all Mormons are required to carry a card.

Met Nathan from Deeplocal
Probably one of the nicest and most interesting people I have met

Bought an Investment Property

I became a landlord after buying a property in the same block as I live. So far it's been very easy as the real estate agent does everything and I can't be assed joining the body corporate. Oh and my first job as landlord.... was to up the rent $20 a week [evil laugh]

Did Movember properly
The previous years I have kept a beard and shaved at the end. This year I spent November with a full moe. It was itchy but we raised $1500 for charity

New Glasses
I didn't realize my old glasses were three years old until the paint started to peel off them. My new specs (see above) go for the big nerd look. They are also 5x heavier than my previous titanium glasses. My nose is slowly getting used to this.

Old glasses below:

Got a Valid Medicare Card
The new glasses prompted me to get a valid Medicare card (needed to bulk bill that eye test). The previous one expired in 2007. This also reminds me that I haven't been to the doctor in three years?!

Got a Smart Phone & used it like a dumbass
We got a free Nexus One in the office (thanks to a Unity licence) and I snapped it up. This was after having a Nokia 6280 for 4 years. It still works but I got sick of not having a properly synced calendar and remote email access.

I then proceeded to be an idiot and rack up $700 in data charges in 2 months! My tears to the 3 operator got me a 50% discount.... luckily. I'm now still waiting for my iPhone 4 because as much as I like the Android platform I want access to all the apps and games the App store offers.

Discovered new music I liked
I didn't post that much to Sleevage this year but I was able to discover some new music (well new to me) over the last 12 months.

Moderat
I put these guys on high rotation late in 2010.

Nina Simone
I'm probably the last person on earth to discover the name of the singer of so many classic songs.

The Temper Trap
Ok this is borderline but the wife likes them so I'll play along. They are Aussie so that helps.

Wax Tailor
This has been played a lot in the office and I finally asked "who is this playing?"

Santogold
This would be my karaoke song if it wasn't so embarrassing.

Broken Bells
This really grew on me. Thanks to Rob for the tip.

Saw a Double Rainbow
Didn't think to make a video of the experience. I saw this while at the Cockatoo Island for the Biennale.

Professional Life
As someone who is obsessed with work I find it hard to separate professional and personal life. I also find it hard to relax and not think about work. It's a hobby and a career. Here's some of the big events of the year outside of actual projects.

Won Digital Agency of the Year

After many years of being runners up or finalists in these agency awards we finally won Adnews Digital Agency of the Year. A huge win for the team who worked their asses off.
We were runners up for B&T Awards also. I'm still confused how they judge these things and believe you really can't win by being honest. It's more about the grand story than reality. One agency will win B&T Awards but then not even be short listed for the Adnews awards. How that happens shows you the impact the jury has.

We followed that up with not even being short listed for the 2010 B&T Awards this year :( I nice dose of reality.

Speaking of award blue balls we were shortlisted for 10 AIMIA awards this year and walked away with none. Luckily we called their bluff and didn't send anyone to the actual event. We spent that money towards dinners for the team.

Won the Sydney Global Game Jam
Hendrik and I spent 48 hrs locked in the Powerhouse Museum for the Global Game Jam. Our team (Hendrik & myself and a UNSW student Sash) actually made our game in 38 hrs for the Global Game Jam as we went home for a good sleep on the last night. The game was featured on Good Game and some other shows but I don't have video of that :(

Here's a video of the game play and you can play Tentacle Assassin yourself here. I did the majority of the code (AS2!) and audio and Hendrik did the art while Sash did support code.

And yes we chose a theme that would play to the audience as who doesn't love lots of blood.

Funny story: it was 1 hr before the final presentation when we were told out game could not be shown due to the small kids in the audience. After lots of protest (read: whining) we were allowed to display it with a warning to the kiddies.

It was a great event and I met Dan Graf from Dr D studios and Sash from Bit Battalion who I still talk to regularly. It got a little tense around 20 hrs in but we made it through.

Working 38hrs straight, after already doing a full day of work at Soap takes the wind out of you. Especially when Glenn is yelling at his computer every 5 minutes for his game Gnilley.

Ate a Shit Sandwich (but I ordered it)
When I launched the Hot & Cold list early in the year I did not expect the large amount of poo thrown my way. Some of it my own fault for trying to make everyone happy but I don't think I deserved it all. I was also personally hurt by the lack of support from a few people. But lessons learned are valuable;

You will never make everyone happy, so don't try.
Be 100% clear about what is going to happen. Leave nothing for assumptions
Explain the decision process behind what's happening
Organizing anything by committee is a waste of time. Nothing will ever get done otherwise
Hypocrites don't like being told they are one, so don't bother alerting them to the fact

Read about the Hot + Cold list here

Had two business partners leave in < 3 months
Good things always come to an end but you are never prepared for it. Having two of my three business partners leave around the same time hurts a lot. Business is well but like in all breakups the financial and emotional burden of the departures will be felt for a few years to come.

I've delayed my platinum grillz for few more years. I also felt embarrassed that this happened. It feels like a failure to have this happen when in reality it's just part of business.

Spoke at Ad Age Digital 2010
I was one of the last speakers of the Ad Age Digital event so the crowd thinned out a little. I was happy with my performance and it was one of the first times I have rehearsed with a complete script (which is the only way to do this). I was happier when the presentation got picked up and viewed more than 40,000 times on Slideshare and Soap's #1 presentation (so far)

AdAge Digital 2010 6 Foundations of Great Digital Creative

View more presentations from Soap Creative.

Soap White Papers: 10 Facebook Myths Busted
We made a big effort at Soap to knowledge share and raise our profile within the industry. The 10 Facebook Myths Busted was the first effort and it was received well. Other planned papers have been delayed until 2011 but they are shaping up nicely. Putting the time into these presentations, without the burden of a deadline, is tough. As there are multiple people who work on it without a proper owner it will never get done.

Soap Creative - 10 Facebook Myths Busted

View more presentations from Soap Creative.

Soap R&D
After so many years of being busy to the point of it being silly we had a couple of months where the work calmed down enough for us to develop some of the R&D projects we have had lying around and catch up on a elements like Iphone development which we had fallen behind on.

The Meeting Game
It felt like years because it was but The Meeting Game was completed in 2010. Born out of a few too many long meetings we decided to create a card game that you could play at any meeting. Selection, copy and illustrations all done by committee guaranteed this took much longer than it needed. Humor is a tough won to do by committee as what makes someone else laugh or a pop culture reference doesn't always translate. However it turned out better than I had hoped for and if you want a set send me an email, we still have a few hundred packs left.

Spin Da Wheel: Iphone
We actually had this as part of a pitch back in 2008, we wont the pitch and then the client disappeared. It was a nice simple app to test out our iPhone skills on. It's Spin Da Wheel and not Spin The Wheel as the latter gets cropped on the iPhone to Spin The Whe..

Lava Ball: Iphone
Our first game for the iPhone and Mark's idea which I remembered from a random conversation the year before. The game has had over 220,000 downloads due to it being featured by Apple. We also had a lot of hate on it with people calling it "racist", only in the US app store. I will admit when Joms did the first version of the character with bright red lips I made him change it. But no offence was meant.

Mower Race: Iphone
This is the nicest looking iPhone game we have made. Only problem is the game was way too hard. The game was a re-skin of The Chicken Race which we made for Ubisoft previously. I love the art style for this and hope we can do more like this in the future.

The iPhone app store is a funny beast and we learned a lot in 2010.

Projects lined up for R&D in 2011 are much stronger and a few have some real revenue potential. We have 3 iPhone games mid way through production, each of them completely different, and each I think could be winners. It will be interesting when one game/app does hit gold and we generate a wad of cash. Client work might not get the priority it does now.

We opened and closed an office
We counted those chickens before they hatched. But that's because we had a contract from the chicken's procurement department.... Soap briefly opened a Melbourne office and then then shut it. We're lucky the impact was minimal but it was one of those times when being a business owner sucked. A few lessons learned there also.

I Now Know Why Most Media People Are Lazy
Having now dabbled in media on a small level I understand now why media people are lazy. It's hard work optimizing a media plan mid campaign and clients care more about getting regular, easy to read reports than the actual results.

I'm sorry I didn't get that report done I spent all my time optimizing the media for better results. Oh you don't care...

It's must easier to give the standard template buy, so the results can be input into the standard template for standard results. Sad really.

Moved Desks into the "Management Area"

After sitting and working right next to everyone in the office for 8 years I finally moved to a new area of the office. I even made us of the whiteboard which sat outside to give myself a pseudo office wall. This protects me from the incoming ping pong balls (the ping pong room is also my new office area) and also I don't get distracted as much. I'm attracted to shiny things.

Previously I sat right in the middle of the office and I'd always try to answer other people's questions (even when not asked to me directly), check out other people's screens and basically keep distracted. This always reduced the actual amount of "work" I did during business hours.

What stopped me from moving earlier was I was afraid it would create an "us and them" mentality. This feeling subsided when I met Michael at the Firstborn NYC office. He has his own secret office on another level to get his shit done! The account management and other management staff have their own private office too.

Another reason was to make room for the new staff as we're running out of seats.

However the biggest reason was because I saw this 37 Signals talk on TED, saw Jason talk in NYC & read the book "REWORK".

He reminds me of Justin Timerlake meets Screech from Saved by the Bell. This really made me rethink how I work and I immediately sent this to all staff at Soap.

Unfortunately not everyone shares this simple idea. But for me it's worked. I regularly relapse and will walk around annoying people for no other reason than I want to say hi but I'm getting better.

Sharing my role

I promoted Mark Fennel to share my role with me and moved him away from the general production work. This has had the biggest impact on my daily work life. Mark has taken a lot of daily management of the dev team off my hands, he's taken charge on a lot of internal initiatives that I had let stagnate and also freed me up to think on projects in a deeper way, rather than skim across them.

I've known Mark since 1999 when he was running Flashkit. He was the guy who invited me for my first ever speaking event at Flashkit 2001. Mark not only has the skills to manage people and do the work himself he shares my attitude when it comes to getting things done.

Make it work,

then make it sexy,

then make it better.

It was hard to take him off production as he just gets shit done, fast. But it was the right move

The idea to share my role didn't come to me (arrogance I think) until I I initially interviewed someone for a general developer role. The way he described his experience at UK agencies had me excited that he could handle all the things that I was not good at and we could share the burden of overseeing the technical side so many projects. I then described to him my perfect role and how we'd share it. It would be awesome.

He took another job at a rival agency sighting "I want to have 100% of the responsibility and 100% of the success or failure". I then realized I had sold to him my perfect role, not his. Mark then approached me about the role and we went from there. Perfect timing.

Soap Got Broken Into

There seems to be a serial agency theft gang as Droga 5 and Design Royale also got hit less than 1 month apart. They took three crappy Dell laptops which we only got replaced this week. They wont be back again as we don't leave the good stuff in the office. If only they stole my old Mac laptop!

This was the one time I had my phone off for the weekend. And as I'm first on the security call list by the time the call got to me and I ran over to the office it was too late. I live 5 min (or 3 min when I run like a mofo) so if my phone was on I might have been there in time to see something.

Hey ladies... get funky [cow bell SFX]
We're not sure how it happened but Soap now has seven women working in the Sydney office. From the low of 2009 with two we have defiently ramped up the dosage of estrogen. The LA office has the token female Bianca who only joined last month so they still have a long way to go.

This male dominance is not by choice it's just how we have evolved.

New Soap Site!

Hahaha kidding, it's still not ready yet! After starting in May 2009 and then me finally saying "Fuck it there's an LOL cat on the site now lets get the new site up by March 21, 2010 fast to get rid of that dumb cat". Now after having that stupid cat sit there for 9 months Soap now has a new "holding site" which took exactly 10 hrs to put together by the LA office.

The actual site will launch Jan 7 after we took a knife and removed half the unfinished sections. I'm not sure whether I'm angry or disappointed it didn't get done earlier but I am still confused why the project was avoided. But that is the nature of internal projects, they seem insignificant and there are better things to do... like ping pong.

So that's basically 2010 for me.

A big year as always with highs and lows. I'm looking forward to 2011 as the major distractions for 2010 are all dealt with. There are still more challenges ahead but all seem small compared to 2010's.

A sad love story.

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 22:35:37 +1000

It has been a long time since we have seen each other. Have you forgotten about me. I feel neglected, dirty and used. I used to be your favourite.

Remember when we first met? That video store in the shopping mall back in 95. It was love at first site. You picked me up and we spent the entire weekend together. It was weeks before your smell came off me.

After that it was 3 even 4 times a week we'd be together. Friends used to comment that we were together too much but you didn't care it felt right. It WAS right. I loved those days. But now they're gone. A distant memory that makes me cry even writing this.

Have you stopped loving me because I haven't cleaned myself up? Those were accidents and I tried to get clean but it was so hard you know that you tried but it only made it worse.

Or is it because I'm getting old and you found some younger model to replace me?

You bastard... You fucking bastard!

I can't remember the last time you took me out. You just want to sleep with me and keep me locked up.

I had you inside me!! and you won't even take me to the fucking movies now let alone a restaurant.

It's over isn't it? I knew deep down it was over but I didn't want to face reality. I was warned this day would come. I heard the whispers, the stories but I never suspected it would happen this fast.

Please don't throw me out, I'll stick around. Just out of respect.... don't use me as a rag.

Dedicated to my old Akira shirt 1995-2010 (pictured) which has now fallen apart and is unwearable :( You were my fav.

links for 2010-10-19

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:03:00 +1000

Pac Man and the ghosts costumes

(tags: pacman)

links for 2010-10-17

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 20:02:17 +1000

The Official Resistance Series Timeline - News - GameInformer.com

(tags: resistance)