Traveling Geeks

Unilever Fires Ad Agency of 16 Years & Goes Crowdsourcing

The beginning of the end. Unilever goes the crowdsourcing route to spruce up TV ads and recruit creative ideas.

After 16 years of using the same ad agency, they’re throwing up a $10,000 prize offering for the best creative marketing ideas.

Turning to the masses for ideas is increasingly hip and less expensive. That said, a mastermind at the helm to gather and choose the right ideas or more likely, mix of ideas is also increasingly important.

This is where marketing has to sit and the hat it needs to wear. Forget those MBA hats. When I look at candidates, I think: are you creative and strategic, can you act intelligently and balanced on the fly, be more flexible than anyone else I talk to, and multitask in a flurry of incoming and outgoing noise? (more…)

Traveling Geeks’ favorite online power tools

The Traveling Geeks’ tour of the UK this summer was one of the most intense junkets I’ve ever been sucked into. Among other things, I gave my first major talk at Reboot Britain about 21st Century Literacies. One of the nice side-projects is JD’s survey of the geeks about our favorite productivity tools. Check out Coolest power tools of some top geeks: (more…)

Europreneur Secrets – Scan Biz Cards with Your Mobile: Jack Lang

Favorite Web Aps of European Entrepreneurs from Traveling Geeks Trip

The geeks are digging up some fun new things which may be new to you.

I’ve queried some of my favorite new friends from Amsterdam, London and Cambridge about the tools they love. Here’s the fifth response, from Jack Lang, EIR at University of Cambridge, Serial Entrepreneur and Angel Investor. Jack is also the author of  “The High Tech Entrepreneur’s Handbook.” (more…)

Europreneur Secrets – Favorite Web Aps of European Entrepreneurs- Andraz Tori

This is fourth in a series where I take JD Lasica’s meme “Coolest Power Tools” on a “spin” to see not what our US geeks are using, but what our European Brethren find as their favorite aps. They are digging up some fun new things which may be new to you.

I’ve queried some of my favorite new friends from Amsterdam, London and Cambridge about the tools they love. (more…)

Europreneur Secrets – Favorite Web Aps of European Entrepreneurs- Alan Moore

This is third in a series where I take JD Lasica’s meme “Coolest Power Tools” on a “spin” to see not what our US geeks are using, but what our European Brethren find as their favorite aps. They are digging up some fun new things which may be new to you.

I’ve queried some of my favorite new friends from Amsterdam, London and Cambridge about the tools they love. Here’s the third response, from Alan Moore, Founder of Small Medium Large ExtraLarge Limited.

(more…)

Europreneur Secrets – Favorite Web Aps of European Entrepreneurs- Andy Hobsbawn

This is second in a series where I take JD Lasica’s meme “Coolest Power Tools” on a “spin” to see not what our US geeks are using, but what our European Brethren find as their favorite aps.

I’ve queried some of my favorite new friends from Amsterdam, London and Cambridge about the tools they love. Here’s the second response, from Andy Hobsbawm, Co-founder of Green Thing. (more…)

Europreneur Secrets – Favorite Web Aps of European Entrepreneurs from Traveling Geeks Trip #TG2009

Klaas Wiema and Mathys van Abbe

This is first in a series where I take JD Lasica’s meme “Coolest Power Tools” on a “spin” to see not what our US geeks are using, but what our European Brethren find as their favorite aps. (more…)

Traveling Geeks favorite tech tools

Hey, the folks who went to the UK on the Traveling Geeks tour listed what tech tools they use every day.

Here’re mine:

• Pine, an old-timey email application

• Firefox

• Google calendar

• Google docs

• Google maps

• Seesmic Desktop

• Picasa

• iPhone apps, including Rimshot and Trombone (sound effects)

What Advertising Should Take From TED

These are some thoughts on TED and the advertising industry after Green Thing returned from TED Global 2009 a few weeks ago.

The big problem for the advertising industry is that it wrote the manifesto for the 20th century’s ideology of triumphant consumerism and excessive individualism. Advertising defined what it was that those who had a newfound capacity to consume should buy, and how to spend their money in a way that suited themselves and no-one else. (more…)

So What Did We Accomplish?

This morning I spoke with Roland Harwood, our counterpart at NESTA, who did so much to make The Geeks trip to London as productive and beneficial as we all could conceive. We agreed it was an extraordinary experiment with a leap of faith that our formal and informal encounters would have both short and long term beneficial impact on the region as well as for everyone involved.

Our visit, sponsored by NESTA, EEI and other donors, was a pilot experiment to see what would happen if we could turn bloggers, authors, and videocasters loose to communicate about innovation in London/Cambridge. Using the connectivity and immediacy of the Web in service of extending “knowing” rather than just knowledge about London/Cambridge, we took the leap. (more…)