For the last couple years I have attended the Cannes Lions. It’s my favorite advertising festival of the year: the work, the location, the people you meet, and, of course, the parties. I think what truly sets it apart is it’s international judging panel. Only allowing one judge per country prevents countries like the US or UK from throwing their weight around and creating a biased judging pool – I believe this results in the most accurate and honest results and it shows in the quality of work that wins (even if some of it is a bit over the top).

Due to it’s long standing success and the quality of the work it has become, without fail, the most respected advertising award show in the world and draws in the greatest minds in advertising and marketing. Say what you like about marketers we do actually have some brilliant wonderfully creative minds in our industry. I think really great creative types are less concerned with the medium they work in and are just focused on being able to unlock their mind and think in unconventional ways.

Humanitarian Lion is a group advocating a new addition to the Cannes Lions. They want all agencies that submit work to the Lions to also submit a single document of their thoughts on how to solve some of the worlds great humanitarian issues.  Read More »

First big announcement is that there’s a new emphasis on the Flash Platform – as originally called by Macromedia in 2005. Flash, Flex, AIR, and Thermo are just tools to develop experiences using the Flash Runtime, and apparently all these names are just confusing people. Adobe decided to consolidate everything into one platform and market it accordingly. Thermo was officially renamed to Flash Catalyst, and for those of you not familiar with Thermo, it’s a new tool still on early stages of development, targeted to designers or more specifically interactive designers, and allows them to convert a PSD or AI file into a RIA with all events, motions, states, animations, and data… and the best part is that it generates mxml and as3 code so a developer can extend and continue the development using Flex Builder.  Read More »

Great day at Ad:Tech today, from panels to contacts, new business opportunities, new technologies, new trends, new services… Ad:Tech has it all.

The day started with a keynote from Jonathan Klein, President of CNN/US. John said that CNN embraces innovation, new technologies, new techniques, new trends, and urges all their employees to try new ideas. They have been using user generated content to get faster stories, they have a political blog aggregator that became the largest in the country, they have a program where an expert follows twitter feeds and answers questions and concerns online, in real time, they have a talk show where the host podcasts during commercials, linking the tv air experience with online / web experience. Another twitter fact is that CNN took 4 minutes to cover a recent earthquake in LA, whereas someone tweet it in 30 seconds. They also started providing more data for the next gen during the elections, especially seen during the debates; under the assumption that the younger gen can multitask and consume multiple feeds of information concurrently, they added the analysts’ opinions and scores during debates on side panels, as well as real time undecided voters conversions. Another link between air and web is John King’s touch screen; after the success of the John playing with the screen, they uploaded an interactive version to their site allowing anyone to play with it, just like on tv.  Read More »

SXSW is one of the most prestigious music, film, and interactive events. We submitted a few panels we hope you find them interesting, and if you do please support us by voting for them; it only takes a couple of minutes.

Panel 1: Emerging trends of Mobile Technology (by Rob Gonda and experts TBD)

iPhone 2.0, Android, Flash Lite 3.0, Streaming Video, Electronic Wallets, … Mobile technology is growing rapidly and becoming an intrinsic part of consumer mentality. Hear the experts discuss the role of mobile in today’s lifestyle, discuss emerging technology, and predict national and international trends.

Panel 2: Rich Internet Applications Death Match (by Rob Gonda, Adobe, Microsoft)

Entertaining and informative event where evangelists from industry top players try to defend their products in a competitive death match. Flash, Silverlight, Ajax, AIR, Gears, Curl, WPF, many familiar names, but which one is the best solution for your particular needs? This intense event will reveal the answer.

Panel 3: YourOn.TV – How to Battle Mainstream Media (by Freddie Laker, Adobe, Justin.TV, LonelyGRL inventors)
Online entertainment is changing- online broadcasting tools are allowing everyday people to produce high quality content and distribute it with tools beyond YouTube like Adobe Media Player. Learn from the creators of famous internet content, the new internet celebrities, and the makers of the tools making it possible to compete against mainstream broadcasters. Leading internet celebrities will be available to answer a wide range of questions.

Sapient submitted a total of 14 sessions, creating for the first time a huge presence on this event. I also wrote the content of the RIA+SOA and the RIA Security panels.

Feedback, comments, and suggestions more than welcome. Hope to see you there.