A short post just to let you know I’m still alive and what’s been going on recently.
Here, the transition from Conchango to EMC Consulting is complete. Although it means absolutely no difference to the great work we do for clients, it’s starting to make a significant change to how we’re growing. Can’t say much, but the next few months is going to be interesting and exciting, particularly around how we do design and user experience globally. It’s also a time in which we’ll start building up a new brand to measure up to where Conchango got us to in the UK, but this time it will be a global brand that will start to explore how we help clients realise their ambitions in a number of ways.
A big landmark client project launched; My Barclaycard. This truly is an awesome piece of work and sets the standard for how credit card companies offer services to their customers. http://www.barclaycard.co.uk/mybarclaycard/
Elsewhere in client land, the open innovation initiatives kicked off by NESTA (www.nesta.org.uk) with Virgin Atlantic, that we then carried on (with their support) at Tesco (V-Jam and T-Jam respectively… thanks David) are starting to yield some interesting things. Virgin Atlantic launched their first two co-innovated projects, supported by them and NESTA, and developed by customers. Yes customers. They’re a bright lot those Virgin passengers. The details are here on Virgin Atlantic.com. The two are: Taxi2Town and the Flying Club Facebook application – but go to the Virgin Atlantic site to find out more, and read about the people who developed them. All done in well under a year. That’s a way to get innovation moving.
I did some fun and interesting speaking engagements:
Futureproof in Dublin on the topic of online video – where I got to meet Loren Feldman of 1938 Media, and “Groovy dancing girl” Bandy Toaster as well as some other fascinating characters from the very vibrant new media scene in Ireland.
I did the opening slot at EMC’s own Innovation conference. I was at the Irish segment at our centre in Cork, and I think they enjoyed it! Talked about Total Experience Design as an innovation framework. Also in Ireland, I did a slot with several Irish CIO’s as part of CIO Connect. I’m very happy to report (and I’m sure it had nothing to do with me) but they said that EMC was the highlight of their trip (and they’d been to Apple the day before! Ha!).
At Forrester’s Consumer Marketing Forum Europe, I spoke in the Guest Executive Forum slot to about 100 delegates, who had been watching some great stuff from the likes of Lego, and other great brands. I’m glad to report that what I said seemed to make sense as we had some great feedback. Although, more people seemed to ask about the presentation method rather than the actual content! (Thanks Prezi!)
Also, I wrote some bits and pieces for some of our best UK new media magazines, particularly for .NET Magazine, who were also kind enough to run a feature of me, complete with posey pornstar style photos!
Also, I put some comment into articles as diverse as the benefits of an open API for brand marketers, to new rights models; as well as filming some comment on the Google/Microsoft/Newscorp story for Channel4 News – only to get dropped at the last minute for Biz Stone and the founder of LinkedIn… oh well, I guess they do trump me somewhat! :)
Internally, I also put time and effort into a couple of our most ground-breaking projects, and some big pitches. And of course I did the “Surface Roadshow” in Disneyland Paris, Edinburgh and various places around London. This basically involves taking a Surface device somewhere, taking people through its features and some of the apps we’ve developed and then watching as every single person who I ever demo to goes and finds their house in the map in ‘Concierge’.
Edinburgh was particularly fun as it was an event hosted by Gaby Logan, with Scottish sporting heroes including Bernard Gallagher, Andy Robinson and of course Kenny Logan in one of the most beautiful hotels in Scotland.
Finally, I had the rare privilege after the Imagine 09 event of having dinner along with some of my peers, with Bill Buxton, principal researcher at Microsoft. Suffice to say I left inspired, and having seen those watches close up!
Ok, so that was a typical couple of months at EMC Consulting… come join us!