a glimpse of the future

Nokia and Future Labs recently released a report outlining a point of view on the future of mobile. This video gives a glimpse of some of their conclusions which really just elaborate on the notion of everything moving to a trans-media state.

One thing that they do touch on that struck was the time based role for mobile - in particular the notion of "pre-checking" music, clothes, etc. before kids get to school or people get to the office so they know what to talk about. Not a new idea, but an interesting way of packaging the activities and directing services towards them.

The final thought I had was that the report seems to continue to espouse the mobile device as an entertainment portal (especially for video), as well as an interaction device/remote control that allows you to better get to know the local landscape. While I see the latter activity becoming very rich both right now and in the near future (with apps like Socialight ), the idea of video entertainment on anything but an iPhone size screen or interface is harder to swallow.

where the ....

For some reason I feel an urge to express/explain why I haven't written anything on here for the last month - mostly to work it out in my own head.

It seems cliche to trot out the usual excuses - work, work, work and family (in those proportions). But this is something I don;t think we talk a lot about in advertising. Look around you and see how many 40 year olds work there. Not many I would bet. It is a young person's game because the pressure can be big and the hours unforgiving. At some point, not everyone is going to make it and not everyone will want to?

So I have spent the lats month trying lots of ways to work smarter, not harder. Personally, I am the type of thinker who needs to talk things out in my head and do lots of exploring before I land on one area. It's a matter of building and rebuilding. Because I end up in lots of meetings, to much of this gets done at night. So to switch it around I've been trying to go to sleep earlier, wake earlier and cancel as many meetings as possible.

I think it was Jeff Goodby who once predicted the death of planning due to to much time spent with clients and he is absolutely right. It may be hard when you have a (pleasantly collaborative) client who wants you in all their strategy meetings, but saying no is the only means to sanity.

Of course, cutting out late nights meant cutting out blogging to since that was when I tended to right. Hopefuly I'll get the balance right at some point :)

SF International Car Show

How do you know your 4 year old is interested in cars? He asks to look at the car section of the paper (and no, he can't read). This was just one added reason for the two of us to head down to the SF International car show. The highlight was the new Audi R8 which had a true jet-engine-on-wheels type look. Bu while there one or two mildly interesting other concepts, there wasn't to much that was mind blowing.

It would be interesting to see if the body design focus the industry has had for the past few years starts to fade in favor of an (environmentally oriented) engineering focus. Bring on the hydrogen powered Honda!

the perfect summary

Johnny Vulkan has given the perfect summary of the last year (and possibly two or three years) in advertising. Anyone got any good product design courses going?