Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
It’s been a very very long time since I’ve blogged but I’ve got a lot of stuff to blog about. This post seems a bit pointless, but it’s basically an announcement of some of the stuff I’m going to be blogging about, and they are as follows:
So, let’s start!
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
Woohooo!!! Finally, I’ve worked on a project that’s won an FWA award! The Best Of Us Challenge is centred around the YouTube Contest API and involves you, the general public, challenging athletes at a range of different things.
There’s quite a few different challenges and they’re always being updated! The concept is really cool, you watch a video, record your own challenge and upload it. You can also call for a challenge too!
Check it out at http://thebestofuschallenge.olympic.org/
Friday, October 30th, 2009
So, last time I spoke about monetizing a video player, I was tasked with integrating Tremor Media components. That failed spectacularly because the dev team there, well, aren’t helpful.
So, I then told the sales guys I was working with: “Tremor Media isn’t going to work, what’s the plan?”. The pointed me to LiveRail. And this was awesome…
I’m writing this posts 20 minutes after I started integrating the pre/mid/end rolls advertising wrapper into the player, it’s that easy. Seriously, these guys need a hand because it works, really really well.
So thank you LiveRail, you guys should pat yourselves on the back, as for Tremor Media: shame on you…
Thursday, October 15th, 2009
Yesterday was the #wcatweetup in Maidstone, and apart from being conned out of an iTunes voucher on account of my dyslexia (:P), it was a good night.
It was organised by the wonderful guys and gals at Wonderful in Maidstone and a host of people turned up. It was great to see how much creativity there really was around Maidstone, even in Kent too. And I go some surprises too!
A design magazine… In Kent?!
Believe it or not but the accredited design magazine Baseline in written up in East Malling! It’s funny what’s right on your door step. And I would’ve had my free copy if James from WeLove hadn’t have nicked it. Nevertheless, it’s refreshing to see a magazine that focuses more on content than it does on advertising, thus, there are only four pages of adverts in the whole magazine, and they’re at the back; take that Creative Review.
It defiantly looks like a good read, although I’ll probably just skip through it and look at the pictures. The main thing that struck me about the magazine and the team was how down to earth they are, for example, the magazine it printed on beautiful stock, the pages on the outside consist of a textured uncoated stock whereas on the inside, they’ve picked a paper that does justice to the images and colours.
Furthermore, the quality of articles and guest writers was great too, no pompous people here.
And the best bit was that you’re not paying for a huge book of adverts *cough* *creative review*.
Don’t worry, I don’t get anything from plugging it, in fact I’m going to subscribe to it, it’s only quarterly, so even my dyslexic mind will have plenty of time to read it.
Lots of agencies
I’ve always been in touch with the guys at WeLove, but have never met the crew at Wonderful. I’d only ever see their offices as I drove past. It was good to get to know them, I got chatting to Will Moore, their head of social media, who described his job as “twittering”, what more could you want! It was good to see that a local agency is playing with the big boys up in London and win a few pitches.
That’s what’s keeping the industry fresh, I mean don’t get me wrong, I love working in London, meeting the people, eating the burritos and yes I do moan about the trains and tube (who doesn’t) but it’s London, the design centre of the world!
Nevertheless, too often agencies in London may get bloated or lose touch, so that’s where it takes agencies outside the zone map to push boundaries, and it’s good to see that Wonderful, just like WeLove, are an agency pushing themselves.
And lots of creatives
The main thing that struck me yesterday was the amount of local creative types (that doesn’t necessarily mean designers and developers) who successfully operated around the Maidstone area, it’s great to see that.
Again, I don’t want to contract for the rest of my life, and one day I do want to open up a studio, but work within it rather than manage (who wants to manage?), and by meeting a good mix of people, getting to know what they do, also just mixing up ideas, contacts and general chitchat, it makes you feel almost part of a bigger community that you may not have know was there.
So, it was good to meet everyone, will defiantly do it again, even the post tweet up drink talk!
Good question my old fruity. I'm now sticking any post discussions on Google+. Why? Well simply it's better. WordPress's comment system isn't very elegant and nor are ones like Disqus or Livefyre, so to save hassle I've just shipped them off to a social network, like a real boss.
