Yes it’s true we are looking for creative teams (Junior and Senior) at Dare.

I get a lot of emails from teams, which is nice, but I don’t open all of them and I won’t be able to respond to every single one, apologies for that.

With that in mind I thought it might be useful to give some tips on how to surface on top of the rubbish heap that is my inbox.

1. Don’t use LinkedIn. It takes three clicks to find my real email address online.

7. Don’t email me Friday night or on a Saturday. I might see your email, but will have forgotten all about it come Monday.

Thank you. You have been a wonderful audience.

Anyway here it is.

Is it time to stop and reflect on this digital madness?

I am an extreme case of sharing EVERYTHING, with the result that googling my name (which of course I do on a daily basis) produces a lot of results. I have been online since about 1998. And I am quite lucky in a sense that I have a quite unique name. So SEO is not an issue for me.

How about if your name is Dave Smith (apologies to all Dave Smith’s out there) it’s difficult to stand out online. Or even get a Gmail account. But hang on a minute, maybe that is a good thing to be able to easily keep your obscurity with a common name?

If your name is Baxter Toadstool there is no problem with uniqueness. Will parents have to think about SEO when naming their children? I for one have set up Twitter accounts for my children and Gmail accounts to which I send them emails. Both my kids can’t even read yet. Extreme?

Here is my thought. With all this digitalness everywhere, how often do you actually do NOTHING. Nothing at all. Are we finding it difficult to be in the moment without contemplating the possibility of sharing an experience?

There are so many people now at concerts for example experiencing a gig through a camera or phone with the intention of sharing a moment they haven’t REALLY experienced.

Switch off.

Try it. 2 minutes of nothing.

Difficult isn’t it?

Do we get carried away by all the possibilities of digital just because we can? In design this development seems to be similar. Why does this rooster need to be faux 3D? Because it’s possible?

How much more beautiful is the old packaging.

Is there a similar trend in advertising? Digital because we can? This economist poster is the best interactive ad I know. The completion of what you look at happens in your head. Interactive.

Of course I have stolen this thought from Mr Bullmore’s brilliant book More Bull More.

Social media. Do we get carried away? Sticking something on Facebook doesn’t mean we are “doing” social media. We need to make sure what we stick on FB is good in the first place, then people will share it. Maybe. And guess what, not everyone is on FB either. Image from the brilliant Ian Wojtowicz.

Random: Here is my favourite Antisocial site.

I love the concept of the cloud, but sometimes wonder where some of the serendipitous moments go I experience with my kids when they pull a random book out of my bookshelf. Do we need to kindlefy and iPadialize everything? Someone clever back in the day when I worked at Razorfish said: “Everything that can be digital will be.” I fear they might be right.

Digital imaging is on a similar journey. I have been on Flickr for about 6 years and I have over 21 thousand photos on there. Do I ever look at them? You know the answer.

Earlier this year I went to “The Square” at Sony HQ in Tokyo. It’s where they display the latest cutting edge technology. Stuff like the conceptual living room of the future. Incredible. 3D recording and playing kit. What struck me was how cold the imagery was in all it’s perfectness and supersharpness. Our lovely guide then showed us some artefacts of the Spiderman 2 movie, which I found far more interesting. And then she mentioned how some directors have a special process for un-sharpening films to make them more human, warmer.

I think this desire for humanness and warmth combined with photography nostalgia lies behind the success of Instagram.

Some of the photographic development is scary. Have you heard of the Lytro Camera? It captures the light and you can decide after the fact which part of the picture you want to see in focus. Boom!

In sharp (pun intended) contrast to that here is a rare photo of my grandparents at the 1936 Olympic games Berlin. Totally out of focus, black and white.

How amazing is this image. Of course i am biased.

Here it is. I am making a stand for the off button. As other people seem to do too.

Am I turning into neo-luddite? Do I have a digital midlife crisis?

Now, where is my Wacom Inking iPad connector?

Two things I’d say. I am not a big fan of the ball-pen, so might try and customise with a felt-tip and it sometimes misses out the first couple of lines when drawing (the eyes of the page 3 lady in this sketch).

Not that that matters much really.

It’s Back.

The Gutterbarometer.

Oh yes.

You didn’t miss it but here it is in it’s second year for people in Cannes and at the Cannt Gutterbar in London.

Download the apple iphone application here.

It even has an internet based website.

Amazing.

It’s time to give some props to the people that actually made this pointless marvel:

@admatthews for mad tech skills
@jodmitchell and @alp102 for superspeedy devving
@man_from_monkey for pushing the beautiful pixels
@smorgasbord for maximum artistic IA-ing

You guys fucking rock.

Is it only me or could it possibly be that there are only five famous digital campaigns that came out of the “digital revolution” of the last ten or so years? Subservient Chicken, BMW films and Nike+ spring to mind, but that’s pretty much it, no?

There is one “campaign” that I still think is the best by far. The Blair Witch Project. Scary, different and brilliant in concept and execution.

Now that digital has become so central to all marketing activity, could it possibly be that we are taking things too seriously? Wanting to do the right thing all the time, but creating work that is samey and not surprising?

Where is the stuff that makes us feel like this? Has there been a Guinness Surfer equivalent for 2011?

Where is the funny shit like this famous pre-youtube viral?

Shouldn’t we be making advertising/marketing/whateveryouwanttocallit history? I am optimistic though, because I really think we are going into an era of great creativity. It feels like there are lots of brilliant creatives out there working on the big hit now we have finally done away with the digi VS trad debate.

The tedious discipline divide is not what gets in the way though, it’s correctness, the desire to do the right thing that kills great ideas. Erwin Wurm’s one minute sculptures embody the spirit of making stuff up as we go along. I think we need a bit of that playfulness back.

Also maybe the obvious answer is not always the best. If no one had looked slightly to the left of Mr President they wouldn’t have spotted Aretha Franklin’s amazing hat.

It also seems that process is something that gets in the way of ideas all the time. Philippe Petit didn’t set out to create the best use of a tightrope working together with the best tightrope specialists, no. He had a dream. An idea first and then worked out how to make it happen.

The internet has become a hotly contested space and Facebook and Google are busy working on personalisation. Only that the robots are deciding what is relevant to you. And they know nothing about you. Nothing. At all. This is Facebook. Watch this great TED talk by Eli Pariser.

I think we sometimes forget that Social Media is not Facebook. Social Media is being facilitated by Facebook. The content that people want to share and talk about in the pub. Stuff with cultural impact is what cuts through. Again idea first and then let’s see how it flies (or not) on Facebook etc.

Because online if you are a brand and want people to care about your product you don’t compete with your competitor brand but with that funny David Hasslehoff gif that someone just sent you. It’s difficult to cut through. But if you do, it’s great to see how your idea flies. People are busy with real life things. But if you do that little special thing you might, just might have created a hit. How good is that?

And finally if you want to have a little go at WHOSE URL IS IT ANYWAY a sort of live DJ thing using the internet as the only instrument. Here are the links I used on the night for my set:

Mix this
With this
Add a sprinkling of this
Then go here for a walk
And stick this on
Next up play this with the volume low
Set to this track
And play this fella at the same time
Head over to youtube for this and turn the sound off on this
And stick this on
Now slow down with this fat track
Have a little walk around here
Play this clip, sound off
Exit your set with this
Over this

And so on and on and on…

Once you got the gist, just go with the flow. Use what pops into your head. Try not to bookmark in advance.

Thank you, you have been a wonderful audience.

The genius Max has put this marvel together and now the original client presentation has leaked.

This is HUGE!

This is the best one with Piers Morgan

Then there’s this from ABC

And a few more here

All of which has lead to a host of amazing catch phrases like: “Touch my children and I will eat your hands off your arms.”

And here are some post interview content things:

Charlie Sheen does Charlie Brown

Charlie Sheen Winning Mashup

Charlie Sheen motivational posters

Live the sheen dream, all quotes compiled

Charlie Sheen Soundboard

Sheen Job interview

Sheen v Gaddafi

You can now follow his actual official twitter too http://twitter.com/#!/charliesheen he loves hash tagging his own sayings #Tigerblood

Amazing. Time well spent.

Thanks Sam.

Oh and:

Our lady is NOT happy:

And then there are these: