from a social perspective.com

The slides from the RECORD is now published in this blogpost.

In order to prevent an enormous post covering the whole day like Håvard did on his post from Digital Trend Day I have decided to split my coverage of the Record seminar into two posts. The previous post covered the pre lunch sessions and this post covers the lunch and post lunch sessions. The reason for also covering the lunch is that I was so lucky to share a lunch table with Lars G. Teigen from Second Brain. I have to admit that when I was first tipped about them I didn’t have the time to check out their service and I forgot them quickly afterwards. Anyway, they had some media coverage in Norway today which is funny, and it’s always fun when Norwegian companies get some coverage abroad as well. I guess I’ll have to do a more thorough research on their application some time next week.

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The first session after lunch was held by Jon Olav Eikens, a scholar at AHO. He presented a fictive project called Urørt Labs, which is a project Urørt launched together with the Living Labs. I didn’t quite get why they made a fictive project to front some changes they were going to test out, however he showed a pretty neat way to browse for music on the Urørt site. In short – imagine googlemaps in 3d with only Norway as a map, and in stead of balloons you have straws with different colors that display the type of music present from that town and the length of the straws represent the amount of music within that type or category. I kind of liked it, even if it was just a concept and animation so far.

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The second session after lunch was held by Morten Skogly from Urørt. If you haven’t heard about Urørt, its NRK’s MySpace slash demo contest for bands. The whole session was streamed with Bambuser and you may see the stream at his site. He spoke very highly of the Living Lab and the help they had provided Urørt. He was making a thing of being very nervous when doing his presentation but I think he did just fine. The most interesting points from his speech were probably that they run a live beta of the site. As I understood it, the users have access to a live beta that isn’t currently set into production in order to do some testing and so on. Very interesting indeed. The developers then gave support on the beta version through a chat.

What strikes me when listening to both sessions from NRK is how every speaker talks about how hard it has been, and still is, to work with internet in such a large, old and complex organization. Nonetheless, they seem to be doing a lot of good stuff there, only not to the mainstream. In a couple of years I bet they will be a very large competitor to all the internet media sites in Norway.

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The living lab presentation was held by Ola Gaute Aas Askheim since Synne Fonkalsrud was unable to attend. The presentation was however to detailed to summarize in a short post. Nonetheless it was very interesting. The main focus was information about how Living Labs projects work and a bit about this one in particular. There was also some talk regarding their research methods that seem pretty nice and good. You could read more about them here.

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The last presentation for this seminar was held by Petter Bae Brandtzæg from SINTEF. I know some of his work from earlier as he held a survey on one of our former sites. Actually his first slide said something like: “Online communities die”, and on the second slide he had a picture of the RIP page of my former project (image at the top). It made my day for sure. Even if some of his key findings fit to the image of why we had to close the community or to be more frankly lost all our traffic, the image is a bit more complex then that. But I have to say; that if he wants to use that as an illustration its fine by me.
The key drivers he spoke of regarding keeping the users loyal were:
- People/Friends
- Content
- Usability
- Harassment (Not a driver, but there shouldn’t be any)
- Boring (the party is over) (also not a driver, but you get the point, it shouldn’t be boring)

Regarding people, communities are social; if you don’t have the right people there they won’t connect and won’t be social. If there aren’t any people there, the less interesting content there will be. The others are pretty self-explanatory I guess.
An interesting finding he had made was regarding harassment. As some of you know this was the topic of my MTech dissertation to find a way to get rid off. And one of the things that kept repeating was that the victims were mostly female aged 14 to 16 years and it occurred on sites where one could be anonymous. Nice to know, since it gives some more input to the whole “anonymous or open” on communities.

His best approach when designing a community was to achieve understanding of a group of people and develop technology that helps them. That’s pretty much my philosophy as well.

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That pretty much sums up the Record seminar. I did enjoy the speakers very much and I think it was very sad there was such a low attendance. I also think it’s a paradox that they spend so little time marketing the seminar. The main source of information is on a image flyer somewhere at Opinions homepage, they have a blog, but don’t seem to use it much. Take a look at what Eirik Solheim said about it on twitter afterwards when i pointed out that he wasn’t either referring to their blog. They, of all, should know how to spread the word about the seminar through social media. Utterly sad, and I hope they do something about it next year.

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The first part of the seminar is covered here and the whole agenda may be seen here.

Today was the Record projects seminar on how to design social media. As I wrote yesterday I had intentions to do some liveblogging, however the trouble to connect to the wireless made me take notes instead. I’ll post the notes from the pre lunch session here in this post and make another post for the post lunch sessions. Overall it was a pretty good conference; however I am pretty stunned by the low attendance. I’m not sure if it is due to marketing or what, after all this is still a pretty hot topic in the media business. See the whole programme here.

Asbjørn Følstad from SINTEF was the host for the conference and he started of with a short presentation of the Record project and that included the first and only reference to their website. Strange…

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Matt Jones was the first speaker and I just have to make a personal remark: What’s up with web 2.0 people having stickers all over their laptops? Anyway, he started to show of a neat little gadget called the Availabot, a small USB device that indicates if you are online or not. The prototype puppet was made to resemble him. Funny.
Some key points to his speech may be summed up as:
- We are spending more and more time grooming our social relationships.
- From supercomputers, to personal computers, and now we are back to supercomputers, where we all share our files and so on (flickr).
- Maps can show us if things are made to easy or to hard, a reference to a map of halo 3 showing what type of weapons is being used where was shown.
- If you change the score you change the game, a remark is made of the dashboard in the Toyota Prius. In stead of showing the Mph, it shows Miles pr Gallon.
- Flickr – The commons. Taking photos from large libraries and let users comment, tag and annotate the images.
- Social software should have some game mechanics or aspects of game theory. (sarcastic)Interesting remark, sad thing the best people I know on game theory lack social antennas(/sarcastic)

I haven’t tested Dopplr yet (until now). I do know what it’s all about, however I rarely go to the same places as the rest of my social network. Nonetheless, it is nice to see how they have included Flickr to handle the photos and so on. The trend of social media connecting together is getting more and more obvious and visible.
Tip: Programming collective Intelligence – O Reilly, a book that I GOT to have!

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Marika Lüders was up second, I have to be honest and say that I got very little from her presentation. She’s obviously an Academic with capital A. I got lost very early with her references going both east and west. And was I walking around thinking I was too academic… Good thing she gave a clear conclusion in the middle of her presentation, we are NOT closing in on the end of professional mass media systems.

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Rune Røsten, CEO of the Norwegian social network Nettby held a very good speech after that. He started of with some traffic figures which were very impressing. It’s actually the first time I’ve heard someone talking down their traffic numbers. He also talked a bit about the design principles they have over at VG.
- Good mix
- No constrictive whitespace
- Different sizes on images and typography
- Curious titles
- Sub titles that create expectations.

He pointed out that it is very important that the article has to deliver to the expectations the title and subtitle create. Its all about creating a trust with the user, if you do this 10.000 times it increases a bit every time, if the article doesn’t deliver you loose. Since they don’t use any constrictive whitespace to keep some order, they use black lines to tighten the design.
When accidents happen, all resources are allocated to the case. Cases like the accident in Aalesund are important to do correctly. When the storm blows off the traffic settles to a higher level than earlier. It was related to an increase in the credibility.
Regarding how they work with their social networking site he made the “used not to few times” analogy to hosting a party. Start with a small venue and a good host. The first guests who arrive need to be taken good care of. Set the tone early. Spend time on commenting the first submissions from the users.
The design is based on the principles of “Womenomics“. Feminine and soft for men. Continuing beta, always in change.

Topics we’ve heard before that has been mentioned were geography and the importance of communication with other users who are “close”. Small towns are better suited than big towns. Letting the users create an identity and displaying it.
Traffic creates traffic, display it. Nonselective event log from your friends. Funny since it should foster information overflow but obviously works well for them.

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In stead of Simen Østgaard who was unable to attend, Eirik Solheim stepped up with Anders Hofstad Hofseth for their presentation. Their speech was mainly about how they use NRKbeta to get feedback on their work of the new front page. They also talked a bit about how the long tail works for NRK, and 10% of their content drives about 80% of their traffic. So related to the new design on their front page they are going to focus on the users who needs help to find the buried content. 75% of their sites pass very little traffic to other content.
They made the same analogy as Røsten regarding hosting a party. And just a short “thank you” to a comment is important to make sure the users come again.

There was also a short discussion right before lunch and I have only made a few points in my notes here:
- Effective communication is more important than effective design, if it is pretty or ugly is subordinate.
- Pretty or ugly design is subjective. Its about understanding some form of order.
- If launching a concept with a partner, do it on a common neutral ground. (yr.no)

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I’ll get back on the second half of the seminar later today.

The second part of the seminar is covered here: RECORD seminar 2008 - Part 2

Tomorrow i’ll be attending the Record seminar at Forskningsparken in Oslo. I was there last year as well and it was pretty good. This year it seems like the Norwegian science community on the topic has gotten a step further and is a bit more established.

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I have written a short translation of the program here since it’s in Norwegian. I also didn’t find their official page until late in my preparations for tomorrow since the invitations and so on haven’t mentioned the site at all. Pretty annoying, and I had actually planned to write a post regarding the paradox. I’m not sure yet if I’ll be posting live or if I’ll give a short sum up from my notes through the day when I get back at the office. Either way, you’ll find the posts here.
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From fad to fantastic future
Matt Jones, designer and founder at Dopplr, He was creative director fro the award-winning BBC News Online and Sapient’s London studio in the first boom. Then at the BBC in 2001 for the BBC’s web search and a geo-located social network. From 2003 he joined Nokia in design research, then as a director of the UX design.
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Are we closing in on the end of the professional mass media system?
Media scientist Marika Lüders at SINTEF IKT is going to speak about how a growing culture of participation changes the reality for media actors and what this has to say for the development and design of services in social media. I also happened to find her on Twitter.
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How to make a traffic boosting design?
Rune Røsten, CEO of VG Nettby presents the goals and design strategies that has lead to the enormous growth for VG.no and their social networking site Nettby. These two sites happens to be the most visited sites in Norway.
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NRK Online – ”open for everyone”
Project managers Sindre Østgård Eirik Solheim and Anders Hofseth present NRK’s methods for the new layout of their front page. As a common broadcaster NRK has a responsibility towards the society including to reach all users. Through their blog at NRKbeta their users are invited to a discussion regarding the design and layout.
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Interface in motion – new opportunities and challenges
Scholar Jon Olav Eikenes at AHO presents “navmotion” as a term to understand the increasing use of animation and visual movement within navigation. What opportunities and challenges is linked to this?
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Rock’n’ Roll in social networks
Urørt is a social network site where unsigned Norwegian bands may share their music with others (did someone whisper myspace?). Morten Skogly from NRK is sharing his experiences regarding design of a social network for sharing and exploring music.
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Living lab – A living laboratory and key to deeper understanding
Consultant Synne Fonkalsrud Ola Gaute Aas Askheim from Opinion presents the status of Living Lab, one year after the start. How has Living Lab contributed to a deeper understanding towards social networks?
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Disloyal or engaged – How to shape the users of a community
Scientist Petter Bae Brandtzæg at SINTEF IKT presents science results that shed some light on factors leading to engaged community users. What should be on your attention regarding loyalty?

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The conference were summed up at these two posts:  RECORD seminar 2008 - Part 1 and RECORD seminar 2008 - Part 2

I’m currently at the Digital Trend Day - Effective Mobile Business held by INMA and IFRA. I’ll try my best to give you some updates during the day.

General note: I have some problems with the connection (digital media seminars…), I will update as soon the problems are fixed.

Speakers, subjects and updates:

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Trends and best practives of the mobile publishing business
Kristina Büren, Business Development Manager, IFRA Sweden

Kristina talked about:
- 3 billion mobile subscribers globally (est. 2008: 50% of the Earths popuation)
- 76% had pohone with mobile Internet access (32% used it)
- general stuff like the iPohone
- problems with transcoding

Mobile trends:
- Local search growing rapidly (even faster than web search)
- Reader pictures - still going strong
- Content importance, what the users want: Wether (53%), Sports (49%) , News (36%)
- Svenske Dagbladet testet bambuser for live streaming from different happenings using mobile phones
- Referred from Pontis about user attitudes towards mobile advertising

A case study from Sweden:
Negotiations with mobile carriers gave results. With clear win-win argumentation they agreed on the following in a trial period:
- lower fixed costs
- more beneficial revenue split
- higher transactions possible
- variable VAT possible

Sum-up: Nothing new but a good introduction (and day-starter) on the topic.

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Understanding the consumer
Henrik Pålsson, VP & Head of Consumer Lab, Ericsson SN

Henrik talked about:
- Differences in Internet and mobile phone usage
- Differences in premises: Internett on mobile phones is NOT the same as on a laptop (and we can categorize apps as mobile originated and Internet originated)
- Categorizing the digital arena: Content (key driver for usage: interest), Applications (key driver for usage: access), Habitats (key driver for usage: socalising)
- Willingness to pay (in a consumer perspective): Key drivers are interest, no alternative, urgency, convenience, peer pressure, novelty and status. Key barriers are the culture of the free, skepticism toward digital products and services, uncertainty of usage and security matters
- Consumer expectations on payments models: fair, transparent, consumer in control
- Advertising principles: agreement, optional, relevance (in that priority order)
- The role of the mobile phone in advertising: niche segmentation, one-to-one targeting, availability

Conclusions:
- Advertising will enter into the mobile phone
- The mobile phone should the handled with care
- The mobile phone is currently a supplementary channel

Live stream [Shot] from Henrik’s talk (with the help of Bambuser and my Nokia N95 8GB):

Henrik ended with a quote from Per Holmkvist, the CEO of Mobiento (who owners are my firm):
The website is your supermarket and the mobile site is your 7eleven.***

Success with mobile advertising & classifieds
Sharon Knitter, Senior Director of Consumer Products, Cars.com (joint veture)

About cars.com:
- Leading online automotive destination
- Joint Venture of Belo Corp, Gannett CO. Inc, The MacClatchy CO, Tribune CO and The Washington Post Co
- Launch 1998
- 10 million unique monthly users

Their expansion strategy:
- The mobile opportunity: deliver the best content from cars.com on the mobile phone (optimized for the mobile environment)
- Develop a new advertising channel

Further she talked about:
- They believe there are two broad categories of mobile site usage: On the lot (late stage shoppers), on the train (early stage shoppers)
- Launched mobile site in april 2007, began promoting from own web site and contextuelle areas
- They redirect traffic from www.cars.com to mobile site when using a mobile phone (except iPhone). Comment Håvard: The norwegian newspaper Dagbladet (with others) does exactly the same.
- Implementation strategy, three key characteristics: Speed to market, modest initial investment, use products insights to guide future development

Options for implementation:
- Create downloadable mobile applications for cars.com’s mobile site (PRO: richer graphics, permanent branding, easy to use, complex integration)
- Create WAP site which is optimized for the mobile browser (PRO: Viewable from any mobile browser, no download necessary, can optimize content)
- Use code conversion to translate our web site into lowest common denominator xhtml (PRO: Fast to develop, little need for internal tech resources)

They choosed:
- Use WAP to drive initial mobile sites
- Use outside vendor to develop mobile site (APIs)
- their checklist: Cost, handsets supported, advertising integration, technology, carrier relationship, metrics, company stability, experience, references, future growth

Live stream [Shot] from Sharon’s demo (with the help of Bambuser and my Nokia N95 8GB):

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Developing a mobile strategy
Johan Brandt, Mobile Director DN, Dagens Nyheter

- They launched a revamped version of their mobile site in Q3 2007: mobil.dn.se
- They use Mobiletech as development partner

The DN mobile:
- The DN mobile, in cooperation with Telenor and Nokia: A mobile branded with Dagens Nyheter (DN)
- Special made from Nokia factory
- You can get directly to Dagens Nyheter mobile site with one easy click (their own button on the phone)
- Factory installed DN bookmarks in Nokia’s N82

Strategy with the basis of mobil.pastan.no, a mobile edition of their popular guide to Stockhold:
- [Social] Ratings: Give instant feedback
- [Social] Comments: share your opinion
- [Contextual media] Local search: Find venues where you are, easy drop down menu, search by area, street name etc (Where do you want to eat? Choose area!)
- [Personal] A unique mobile user is really unique (transform user and usage data to relevant content), anticipation has greater value in mobile (surfing is difficult).
- [Challenges] Getting paid: Banner advertising, premium push services paid by the user, revenue sharing, sponsorships
- [Challenges] Adapt our process for our new channels
- [Challenges] Reader involvement: Where, when and how?
- [Changes] Standardization of technology
- [Changes] Standardization of advertising and measurement
- [Changes] Flat fee mobile browsing

Johan got a question about whether he had to pay Nokia for the DN mobile, and how many was sold. He didn’t want to talk about the deal or any numbers regarding it, but made the following statement: I’m quite happy!

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Lunchtime

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Panel Discussion: Newspapers and mobile operators get together to discuss the future of mobile services: content and business models
Dr. Stefan Volck, Vicepresident Content sourcing and Media Cooperation, Deutsche Telekom
Indra Åsander, Senior VP & Head of Product Management, Teliasonera
Morten Holst, Head of Mobile, Verdens Gang
Urich Lingnau, Verlagsgeschäftsführung WELT Gruppe / Berliner Morgen Post

Due to problems with the Wi-Fi i can’t stream the whole 90 min panel discussion (3G abroad is expensive). I’ll embed the live Bambuser channel here, so when i go live you’ll find the stream [Shot from panel discussion]:

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A better mobile internett experience
Anat S. Amir, Senior Mobile Marketing Management, Google Mobile

Anat started the talk with some mobile insights which included what she means is the winning formula for mobile Internett:
- Full browser
- Flat data plan
- Great user interface

Based on this Google has developed their own mobile strategy which can be summarized with the following three points:
1. Bet on the web
2. Super fast search
3. Location, location, location

All this leads to, you guessed it, Android (take a look at Open Handset Alliance as well). She did’nt have anything new to tell, but gave us some examples on other products which can be seen as a step further in the development of Android:
- iPhone Grand Prix: An app for iPhone which has the “full Google package” of services
- myLocation: An app that calculates where you are without GPS (based on the cell towers your phone connects to)

Anat then moved on to talk a bit about search statisticts. On the top of “what users search for on their mobile phones (by categories) you find:
1. Adult stuff (lets say it loud and clear - PORN) 22%
2. Entertainment 14%
3. Comparing/Economic guides
4. Local stuff (based on where you are/where you come from)

She ended the talk with some promotion for their products. Starting with what advertiser can do with Google on phones (adWords, AdSense for mobile, Syndicated Search Ads and Google Mobile Image Ads) and ending with a list of Google products available on your phone; Search, Maps, Mail, SMS, Youtube, Calendar, News, Picasa, Blogger, Reader, Docs, Sync and finally Notebook.

After the presentation the presenter asked the audience whether they believed Google would make an impact on their business the next 12 months. Before the presentation about 60% believed it would, after the presentation a smaller share of the audience meant Google would be important the next 12 monts. Confusing presentation?

Anat is a good speaker, but she really needs to stop saying “ahm…” five times every sentence. Just a kind advice

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VG - a mobile success in a dysfunctional market
Morten Holst, Head of Mobile, Verdens Gang

VG is the largest newspaper in Norway, both on print, web and mobile phones. Morten started with stating there’s 2 ways to be number one:
- The VG way; combine hard working and good ideas
- The easy way: being an operator (Comment by Håvard: This is a clear remark to portals like Telenor Entry in Norway)

He then spent some minutes presenting VG:
- The largest website i Norway (over 2 mill UV/week in a country with about 4.5 mill people)
- Largest mobile site as well
- VG got even numbers of page impressions during the day (not that many peeks)

A little bit about VG and mobile representation:
- They are building VG as a mobile brand using the paper edition and website
- They want to give the following important message to their readers; set VG as a startpage on your mobile phones

About phones and mobile Internet:
- Its not a phone, its the perfect narrator (storyteller) in all formats (BUT we aren’t there yet)
- The perfect advertising channel
- The graphs (statistics) was like a hockeystick in the early 2000-2002, something the boardmembers loved. Then the graphs started to flatten.

Morten continues his reasoning with a questing, and giving the answer himself: What happened? Operators!

Warning: The rest of Mortens presentation have a certain underlying irony / bitterness (Comment by Håvard: I support Morten)

According to him the operators basic instinct are:
- to control everything
- prohibitive pricing
- to constantly keep the consumers insecure
- defensive and wishful thinking

Point: There is a bunch of good services out there, but people are affraid to use it (because of prices)

Morten mean this is a normal day in the Telco business:
- high churn
- expensive to get new costumers
- low ARPU
- wrong position in the value-chain
- lower paid for the core service

Some people may call it paranoia, but this is their pyramide:
- Network
- - Billing
- - - Terminal
- - - - Portal
- - - - -Try to controll content

How to build a operator portal (according to Morten):
- control the terminal (configuration, hardcore keys, soft-keys, startpages, bookmarks…)
- push new OTAs continously to ensure that no one succeed to choose a new one
- entensive use of others content (feeds)
- make the media-houses dependent of the traffic (force them to integrate “back to” links on every single page)

Case from Norway:
A gathered Norwegian content-market made a pact about stopping their feeds to the operator portals, if they didnt made it easier to set a start page on your mobile phone. Case results; so far success, will be launch as soon as possible.

What we [content-market] would love to see:
- low traffic costs
- operators without portal ambitions
- operators that doesn’t act as competitors in the content market
- mobile advertising

Morten keeps on asking himself questions: What do we need to win the user?
His answer: Trust!
Conclusion: At the moment we don’t have that trust.

! Mobile content revenue in Norway 2007: NOK 1.000.000.000

Morten means: Whats free on the net will eventually be free on the mobile!
- free fotball live
- free weather
- video to traffic costs
- free news alerts on sms

Conclusion: VG focuses on free mobile services, and will launch a free service with news alerts within the next two weeks( if they solve a tech problem with sending 250.000 sms within some minutes). Morten asks rhetorically: What if 250.000 users get free breaking news (alerts on sms) from VG? It will drive traffic!

To end his presentation Morten has the quote of the day: To cooperate with an operator is like having oral sex with an piraja!

Question from audience: When do free news alerts become spam?
Mortens answer: Depends on how often you use it. VG will send about 1 sms a month (12 a year), and really breaking news only!

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IFRA have their own blog from the conference. Take a look at the IFRA Magazine Multiblog - Digital Trend Day 2008.

On Sunday I’m getting on a plain to Amsterdam to attend Digital Trend Day held by IFRA and INMA (program here). I’ll report from that later.

When planning the trip my boss Gry found walki-talki.com - and I like the concept. Its like taking the tourist buss - but by yourself at your own pace. They explain with 3 easy steps:
- download audio (guide) and put it on your iPod or mp3 player
- print their maps
- take the tour with car, bicycle or your feet - whatever suits you

All I need now is the bag around my waist and 2 meters of lens around my neck. Amsterdam - here I come!

Photo credits: wikipedia.org

Just writing a last sum-up post about Gulltaggen 2008. The award-show as ok, you may see the winners here.

The dinner show was great, and great food by Tommy Østhagen. As always!

ln

I have also uploaded more images to the Flickr stream and here is a list of bloggers and whatnot also covering Gulltaggen 2008.

ln

NRKbeta vant nesten en Gulltagg

Røde Kors best på nett

Overtar Google snart annonseringen på TV2

Jonathan Harris

Gulltaggen 2008

ln

And just a small note about a comment I found at Endreblogg regarding the need to also buy tickets to the conference and not only the Show. The conference was worth it!

ln

In case this was your landingpage, here are my posts from Gulltaggen:

Just some short notes from Gulltaggen conference

Tough decisions at Gulltaggen 2008 (post lunch)

I had to make a tough decision after lunch. The organizers had set up Jonathan Harris and Shashi Seth at the same time. Money and YouTube or Innovation and exploration? Since the rest of my colleagues mainly are salespeople I decided to stop following the mainstream and see Harris instead.
His presentation was one of the best and most inspiring I have seen in a long time. For those of you who haven’t heard about him, he is an artist who specializes in telling stories in new ways digitally. The first project that he presented was “We feel fine”. To sum it up short, they harvest blogposts and if there is a sentence that has the word “Feel” in it they take that sentence out of context and present it as a feeling. I presume they have done some work grading the adjectives if they are positive, negative or whatever and then they present it as a dot on a screen. They have several views of interacting with that data, so I encourage you to check it out. It’s simply amazing and very entertaining.
He also talked about several art projects that he has done, one from the state of Bhutan that made a big impression. The project isn’t quite finished yet, so you’ll have to look out for it.
One thing that also amazed me was the story from when he went whale hunting. The idea was that he would take a picture every 5 minutes, however when his heart rate increased he would take more pictures. Check out the “Time line view”.
You should also check out his site and other work. I see a great potential to adopt some of the techniques in telling news stories in new ways that may bring out emotions to the readers.

The second session after lunch I had some high expectations. The session was held by Michael Stib and the topic was Google TV ads. Interesting to see what Google thinks about TV commercials and how it could be sold, however the presentation was a bit dull.

I then took a leap back to the “Creative” stream and watched David Eriksson who talked about how a Creative Digital Agency make it work far north in Sweden while almost exclusively working with International clients. It was mainly a presentation of their work and you may see it at their website. Apparently during that session the other stream had been simply amazing with Amy Africa blowing the minds of marketers by telling them how design should be and presenting some of their research.

The final session was a presentation of Reactable, a new digital instrument. I’m having a hard time trying to explain it; however you may see a video of it at the end of this post. They are planning to commercialize it and they plan to have it ready by the end of 2008. I want one of those!

Just another small remark. The room that Harris held his speech in is the same room that I saw Johan Gielen and heard the banging hit The beauty of Silence by Svenson and Gielen for the first time. AGES ago… Brought back good old memories!

I tried to post some snapshots here, but apparently we have some issues with the CSS and muliple images in the same post. So here is a link to my flickr page with images tagged gulltaggen2008.

Ill be back tomorrow with more information about the “after lunch session” since there was especially one session that caught the full of my attention, and thus needs more attention here than I’m able to write now.

 

First off Will Whitehorn the president of Virging Galactic talked a bit about how they started to get into the “Galactic” industry which was very interesting. What they seem to have as a motto is that its better to follow the pioneer than being one. They also seem to have a strategy to pick up old inventions and innovate them. A point was also made about how they can compete in so many markets and with so many products, which is quite rare in the Anglo-Saxon world. They just make sure that their products always is conceived as “New, trendy and reliable”. Funny thing happened during the Q&A afterwards where Jason (I think) from Restplass.no tried to coupe the rights to sell Virgins Space travels in Norway.

Someone from go viral was the next one up. I didn’t get his name; apparently he stepped up on short notice since Matt Freeman couldn’t attend. And he was talking about; you guessed it, viral campaigns. His main message was that corporations should stop making commercials and start making content. Consumers don’t want ads, they want concepts. Consumers are also loyal to content, not channels. He also talked a bit about how they seed viral campaigns, stating that they need to find audience connection points to content. No consumer is a trendsetter in every vertical so to say.

John Wilkins from naked news was the last one before lunch and he talked a bit about their campaigns. His two key points was 1, don’t look at your audience as consumers, look at them as partners in the campaign and second was something I derived that B2B corporate websites has less effect then B2C, even if you have your retailers.
Ill make sure to add some links and so on later on, right now there is lunch.