This is a great little video that shows us how people thought technology would help the family forty one years ago. I don’t know who made it unfortunately, but it’s predictions are rather spot on. With one noticeable exception!
It predicts online shopping and banking
Video cameras for security and so forth
The Home Post Office’ i.e. email!
Notice the exception then? Very old fashioned way of thinking about who pays all the bills!
I will shortly be leaving for the sunny shores of Melbourne and a very exciting position with one of the most respected media agencies in the world, Mindshare. As Creative Services Director I will be helping them to grow digital design and development side of the business and I am looking forward to the opportunity to see the similarities and differences between UK and Australian based media.
After all, we live in a global world and the online industry crosses country borders and has changed peoples work habits. But that doesn’t mean that what works over here will also do so on the other side of the world. Especially as the reach is not just limited to Australia and New Zealand, but far into Asia as well. I hope then to find some time to use this blog to bring you some of my observations and also highlight the best that I find going on over there. And hopefully lots of things of interest about actually living in such a wonderful city as Melbourne.
Of course, being on the other side of the world does not affect how one sees the good developments, design and innovations that I like to bring you and so that side of this blog will certainly continue.
On a personal note, whilst being a tad sad to be leaving my new home place of Brighton and its great people and atmosphere, I am swapping it for the similar, if larger, charms of Melbourne and I am very happy about this. I have lived in Melbourne before so I am looking forward to being back amongst the great culture, restaurants and bars and of course the cricket and AFL.
Have fun for now then and I’ll be writing more when I get there in a couple of weeks time.
The project management process utilised for online projects does vary of course from agency to agency with wildly varying degrees of implementation success. Often the process or methodology is borne out of some understanding of traditional project management methodologies, such as Prince 2. With hopefully a lot of thought put into adapting such things for real modern day industry use!
I am planning on writing a lot more about process implementation as this is after all something I have been heavily involved with at each agency that I have worked for. At the moment I am working for a very good small agency in Brighton that are testing out the use of Agile methods for running online projects and so I thought I’d share a great blog from Kelly Waters that will help you to gain some understanding of what this Agile stuff is all about. It can be a tricky concept to grasp and there doesn’t seem to be a great consensus about what it actually all means, but Kelly is very good at explaining things and her blog is a very valuable source if you are looking at using Agile instead of the traditional Waterfall approach.
I was watching an episode of ‘Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip‘ last night which was entitled the 4am miracle, and ostensibly about Mathew Perry’s character searching for that inspiration at 4am that would break the hiatus reached in their creative comedy writing, with only a couple of days to go before the next show.
This reminded me so much of the times we in the web world have been working late and stuck on a coding or design issue with the clock ticking rapidly before launch hour. You’ve all been there, the site is broken and nobody knows how to fix it and you only have 4 hours until it is supposed to be live to the world.
Then your developer goes outside for a cigarette or a bit of a walk and all of a sudden inspiration hits and we are back fixing and rolling again. Usually at 4am.
So I like the terming of such breaks for inspiration as the 4am Miracle, whether at 4am or not. A fine tip for new Producers, Project Managers and Account people to ease off of your dev and design people when it all looks like everything has gone up the swanny. Encourage them to destroy their lungs via a cig break or make them a cup of tea, tell them to sit down and switch off (or take them for a coffee / beer outside) and you will find that inspiration will hit sure enough.
There’s no point getting too stressed and het up as this just carries on the cycle of panic thinking. Take a break, a deep breath and await that wonderful 4am Miracle!
(By the way, why they cancelled Studio 60 I don’t know. It’s witty and engaging and makes you forget that Mat Perry was ever Chandler!)
Bruce and his cohorts have mostly been presiding over an evenings entertainment at:
The Eagle – North Laines
The Hampton and The Windmill – Montpelier Terrace
The Caxton Arms – North Gardens
And we’ve had a fine meal at The Coach House down on Middle Street. Wonderful service! And lunch at The View down on Marine Parade was good with top food and of course the view over the seafront.
I am a bit of a history nut with the whole phrase ‘we study the past to understand the present and throw light upon the future’, reverberating within me whenever I watch the nightly news.
So thought I’d share this interesting fact with you that Martin Kettle wrote about in the Guardian last Saturday. To summarise, it’s generally perceived that the first day of the horrific Battle of the Somme was the bloodiest in our history with 19,200 soldiers falling in just that one day. Apparently though more Englishmen died at the Battle of Towtown on March 29th 1461 with estimates anywhere between 20 and 28,000 killed in just that one day. And killed of course by sword, arrow and spear and not by bullet or shell.
Quite horrific if you imagine then the scale of that slaughter. One in every 100 Englishmen died on that day. So an event with huge impact that doesn’t feature heavily in the teaching of our history and I think certainly deserves some more research from me.
Oh, and the Yorkists won the day against the House of Lancaster in case you didn’t know.
“I reckon it means rusty beard, maybe a kind of horrible disease?”
What it really means:
Carlos is not far off in a strange fashion with the whole rather bizarre ‘rusty beard’ thing. At least this shows that he was ‘flummoxed’ by the word flummoxed!
So flummox basically relates to confusion. To be flummoxed is to be confused and in laymans terms ‘to be downright stumped’! To say ‘I am flummoxed by all that’s going on around me’ is to say that you haven’t a clue what the heck is going on with all the madness around you. (Often said in pubs at around 10pm).
flummox – be a mystery or bewildering to; “This beats me!”; “Got me–I don’t know the answer!”; “a vexing problem”; “This question really stuck me”
Which I think is a politer way of saying ‘I really don’t have a monkeys about what’s occurring.’
Bring back the word Flummox we say! A beautiful under-used word that even those crazy teenagers in England are not taught. Though if they used it then it’d probably end up as some variation of gangster speak. Instead of being a ‘hoodie’ you’d end up being a ‘flummie’.
Though there are too many letters in ‘flummox’ for our teenagers to use as it can’t be reduced to text speak. And I’m not even going to attempt to try….
Reply to this post with thoughts and votes for next weeks word!
Every week the talented and eloquent Don Carlos will help you to understand those English (and British) phrases and words that could well flummox your average visiting tourist or language student (or even a British person who speaks ‘proper’). Carlos is infamous in his home country of Spain and is well placed to provide such important information that you will not find in a textbook or mini travel guide. His experience primarily derives from being somewhat confused by the banter that goes on around him from his friends in the pub!
Our word for this week is: Wotcha!
Our hero Carlos at first thought it meant:
“Wotcha; it’s a kind of waving Trojan?”
His helpful British friends (after having no idea what the above meant!) have correctly told him that it actually means:
Wotcha: A greeting used by school kids in the late seventies and eighties that has sadly fallen out of fashion. Derived from the words ‘watch you’ and shortened into a more amenable salutation. The correct response is of course to repeat back the word ‘Wotcha’ in an enthusiastic fashion.
Not to be confused with the often used phrase ‘Watch it’ which if said to you by an angry looking bald man means you should probably make a quick exit.
Wotcha is currently undergoing a mini-revival among us 30 somethings who can no longer keep up with teenage speak (what the heck do they mean and why can’t they spell properly?) and have decided to confuse the teenagers by going back to our own school playground language.
For a possibly more informative origin of the phrase please see Wotcha on Phrase Finder, though we prefer our ‘I said it as a kid’ version above.
PS – ‘Flummox’ might well be explained by Don Carlos next week!
There has been a lot of comment and fuss over the new branding for the 2012 Olympics in sunny London. These were released to the public yesterday. Have a look at http://www.london2012.com/index.php if you haven’t already seen the papers this morning! Londoners do not seem very happy about this ‘modern’ design. I work in a design studio and the comments and general shrieks of shock from the team were not encouraging. But I am sure we will grow to love it in time.
That aside, I’ve been wondering though whether Wolff Ollins (the brand agency) have been employing a lot of Australian designers? The zero looks a lot like the shape of Australia to me!
Very cheeky if they have managed to get away with that without anyone noticing!
The Cutty Sark was (and hopefully will be again) a majestic ship and very much part of the British maritime history. Not to mention a big draw for people visited Greenwich. I loved going there as a kid and still find joy walking past it on my way to the pub!
The fire is a bit of a tragedy but looks like it can still be saved. Show your support on the Cutty Sark website. It is worth saving.
Digital innovation in augmented reality, websites. mobile apps. including the iPhone, online advertising and any other campaign ideas and creative that floats our boat!
