Here is a run-down of the most interesting talks:

Day 1

After the interesting keynote which was kicked off a Mexican band, a few of us went to see Visualising Voice: Using the Flash Microphone for advanced interaction by Chuck Freeman. Chuck discussed his quest to persuade Adobe to extend the microphone feature in Flash whilst impressing us with his examples and research.

Dr Woohoo! was next up. We were all blown away by just how much incredible work this guy was doing and his imaginative combination of technology. In one example was using face tracking in openFrameworks to plot 3D points in Maya. These point where then used to create a stunning digital painting of 3D ribbons. Impressive stuff.

The inspiration session that evening was Epiphany by Joel Gethin Lewis. This was right up my street as an interactive artist with visions of grandeur. He introduced us his impressive body of work which included the Massive Attack sound reactive light shows, the world’s first interactive Christmas lights on Regent St and the breathtaking interactive multi-screen floor, Contact.

DAY 2

Leaving the Sandbox by Joa Ebert resulted in a thoroughly well deserved standing ovation, and the longest round of applause I’ve ever heard. The guy is working on some truly intense frameworks including a plug-in for eclipse that checks code for any possible optimisation and a library to manipulate and optimise ActionScript Bytecode. He also showed us his AS3 decompiler which automatically generates UML diagrams and class hierarchies. He finished off by compiling a SWF from C# and then another from Java! He nonchalantly mentioned that he knocked it up in his room the day before.

Hacking the newsroom by Jeremy Thorp was up next. Jeremy guided us through his Data Visualisation experiments that came from toying with the New York Times API and Processing. His work was both beautiful and informative. I found it fascinating how his visualisations would reveal trends of public thought in relation to events and periods of time.

The inspiration session was Choose your own adventure by Craig Swan. This was just the most awe-inspiring talk and one of the best of the conference. It was a personal journey in which we were introduced to the phenomena that is Cymatics, the formation of fractals and patterns from sound waves vibrating a substance. There was a great discussion on the power of intention.

He played a clip from The Secret Lives of Plants that astounded me. It appeared that positive or negative thoughts were having an influence on the plants.

His multi-directional speaker was a truly strange experience. It seems to project this sound to wherever it was pointing. It was extremely unsettling having the sound seemingly travel through me as he brushed it past the front row. Chilling stuff.

Initial thoughts:

I was initially quite taken aback by the quality of the set-up and I didn’t know many of the speakers but I had a feeling this was a pretty big deal.

Josh

Having never heard of flash on the beach, when I was invited by my Technical Director my reply was “What?” Then somehow the flow of conversation led him to contemplate whether I was engaged in narcotics …

Viet

Day 1: Dr. Woohoo – Cybernetic Arts

We saw Dr.WooHoo (possibly so called due to his love of ‘rock-a-billy’ judging by his quiff). He gave a cool speech on Cybernetics, showing us various videos from past cybernetics (which were surprisingly modern looking). I think that’s a concept that will be going very far indeed, for example, cinema could be filmed in a far more realistic 3D way.

Dr. Woohoo’s session really stood out, not because of his dangerously insane idea but his execution to create his brilliant interactive art designs. For his presentation he used the Zcam (infra-red motion detection camera for Xbox 360 Project Natal) to track movement of his face to create a drawing using Maya.

We then saw Hillman Curtis present a session on his work which wasn’t really related to Flash in any way but I thoroughly enjoyed it. He spoke about how his recent endeavours were mainly film based, doing portraits of different artists. One which he showed in the most detail was of Stefan Sagmiester (designer/typographer). It was called ‘some things that I have learned in my life’ (don’t quote me) and focused on him while at his new show in New York. It also had a few well-known designers etc telling the camera what they had learned as they wrote it on a foggy window for the cold, snowy outside to see. Milton Glaser had a nice story about how a taxi driver had told him “worrying gets you nowhere” (Buddha), which I liked.

Joel Gethin Lewis – Epiphany

The final speaker of the day, Joel Gethin Lewis, stole the show with his working life biography. The most impressive of which were huge interactive light installations – On tour with Massive Attack: he designed a huge concave wave shape which surrounded the band and reacted with the noise produced either by them or the audience. The Regent Street Christmas lights (fully interactive and even initialised by the public and not a “celebrity” for the first time),  finally he has created a 2.5 million interactive floor light install in Japan and all before the end of his 20’s. Nice CV Joel!

My personal favourite of this session was his work with the band Massive Attack. The interactive sound stage lights were used to create a great atmosphere for the gig.

Day 3: Mario Klingeman – Connecting the Dots

For a man who claimed he was merely a maths groupie (“I can’t play zee instrooments but like watching zee band” [heavy German accent]), DAMN did this guy know his maths! I really thought he was going to solve the hunt for the prime number formula.  He showed us how he made an image of the Mona Lisa fit into a Twitter Tweet (which I must say did pass me by slightly but it got about 200,000 views so I’m guessing its quite a breakthrough in the Twitter world)! It was pretty intense stuff, kinda like a mad scientist trying to tell you his life’s work in a matter of minutes, too eager and excited to make any sense, but you know there’s something pretty special there.

Seb Lee-Delisle – Work/Play

Our next meeting was with Seb Lee-Delisle of Flash Brighton etc (they have a few sites on the FWA award site including ‘Big and Small’). He was a great speaker and held a very captivating and interactive talk which was largely to do with a part of Flash which he hates and no longer seems to use called ‘Tween’ and instead urged everyone to use ‘Ease’ (looked as if he had a point). He then went on to hand everyone out a glow stick and some 3D glasses and we played 3D Pong by waving our arms frantically in unison to control our block.

JAM SESSION

We went to the ‘Jam Session,’ where six guys get up and at very short notice have to talk about a subject for 10 minutes.  We saw a few really great talks  there, one of which I found particularly amazing. Joa did a speed coding session which was just him DJing in code! Amazing, I’m sure he could do some sets in clubs with that concept and people would be  blown away.

Joa Ebert, speed coding, Live, 9 minutes, 40 seconds, absolutely crazy.

I instantly got why this was so popular at the conference last year. Each speaker was told to present something interesting in extremely short notice. Although they all presented some great things, two names stood out, Andre Michelle and Joa Ebert. Andre’s Kling Klang audio DSP lets you manipulate a sound that was placed on a circle like a clock a hand the pointer played the sound.

James Jarvis – Live Drawing with James Jarvis

Next was James Jarvis, an illustrator come toy designer with a skating background, who did a well-known ad for Nike. He was a very quiet man who spoke his story and then went on to do the rest of the talk whilst drawing and explaining his style under a camera. I went up to the stage afterward and managed to have a chat with him about skate culture, which we concluded has an extremely underrated influence on the creative industry and he gave me one of his doodles. Thanks James.

Joshua Davis – Space

So… the last session… Joshua Davis. Man, this guy is just on another level. A colourful punch of real life in a place full of square-eyed nerds (forgive me, square-eyed nerds). His approach to graphic design was just awesome. He showed us how he constructs his work and uses programs and a kaleidoscope technique to make these great images with ease. I really can’t explain fully how awesome and inspiring this guy was for me but if you ever get the chance to see him take a lecture (which he isn’t for a few years as he apparently has some things to do), for the love of god get right on it. Ok, so I liked his style but seriously check him out, top dolla…

He was perfect person to close the conference, fantastic speaker. He walked through his process to how he ended up with his final pieces. He showed interest in Bézier curve mathematics,  from which he created a relatively simple program that created curves. From constantly playing around and perfecting he ended up with his art. Using a program it can create countless different artwork – not bad considering this came from a dot just going across a screen. He applied the same concept of getting something interesting and making it great with a kaleidoscope effect which also created an iPhone app “Reflect” that created random pictures using any image.

Final thoughts of FOTB 2009

There was a little bit at the end where John the compare came on again and did a raffle type give away and introduced all the ‘people without which none of this could have happened’. I actually came away from the place with a slight ‘festival feeling’, the one you get when you are in a place with lots of people doing the same thing, working together. Very nice, well done John (organiser). May I just take the time to say I have never… NEVER seen so many apple products in one place in my entire life. The place was like the apple store on a busy Saturday afternoon, iPhones/Macbooks the lot, barely a PC or Nokia (etc) in sight.

As conferences go this was awe-inspiring and really exceptional, and the line up of speakers did were all fascinating and were a credit to each of their respective fields of profession. Even though I have not previous frame of reference everybody thought this year’s conference was quite remarkable.

Until next time FOTB ’09…

Viet Anh / Josh Denton

Just because you read the words, “vector, 2D, 3D, madness” and “fun,” do not assume that this relates to anything creative. Trapped in the middle of a row for an hour of Koen De Weggheleire and what became clear was maths, code and more stuff looking like coded maths, was a little too much for a morning session.

Do not assume that ‘connecting the dots’ relates in any way to the age-old art of dot-to-dot drawing. Mario Klingemann delves into the complex patterns that infinite prime numbers can form when twisted and turned, pretty mind blowing, followed by an attempt at compressing and representing the Mona Lisa into Unicode Chinese symbols, all within 140 characters.

James Jarvis’ live drawing was a welcome distraction from the flash, indulging us with tales of a past life as a semi-pro runner, desires to be a sporting hero, love of Tin-Tin and how he develops the worlds his potato headed characters inhabit.

Josh Davis followed, showing off a few examples of his generative artworks and how they loosely related to the concept of space. Some great work, 2 cans of red bull and a plug for his iPhone app, at £1.79 – the sliding finger action of an iPhone unlocking was seen all around – He’s now taking 2 years off for some rest.

In the next couple of days the blog will host a Flash on the Beach (FOTB) homepage take over, designers, techies, and interns descended on Brighton to see what Adobe and the FOTB folk were developing and inventing.

First up are Dan’s notes, from the underground! From the belly of beast! From memory whilst staring into space from his desk the next day …

Josh, the creative Intern, and Viet, the technical Intern, made the journey to the seafront twice.  We even gave them a couple of quid to buy crisps and cola. Well it is the least we could do for the trials that they suffer during their tenure @ skive.

The Actionscript team geeked out and were left inspired and informed by a number of standout sessions. Not only did they exercise their minds, but also their hearts – bonding on the pier with a breakfast pizza following a night of shots until 5 AM. I am telling you, these boys know how to party – it’s like after school at the chess club.

Image courtesy of @laszlo-photo – http://www.flickr.com/photos/laszlo-photo/2533701878/sizes/l/

I attended an event organised by the MCCA this week entitled “Gain an unfair, competitive advantage for the year ahead from expert insights”.  It had some very interesting people on the panel and there were some great insights.

One thing I found surprising was a strong feeling by a few of the panelists that one of the biggest threats to the traditional advertising & marketing model was that of government / EEC regulation and legislation.   Now clearly this is true for the sectors involved with politically hot topics like alcohol and unhealthy foods aimed at children.   However, I am not the first to say this, but the biggest threat to traditional advertising surely is social media.   The level of trust in advertising as measured by the Advertising Association has recently fallen to 14%, whereas 78% of consumers say they trust the recommendations of other consumers (Nielson, Trust in Advertising report).

We have always read the books, seen the films, bought the brands, etc recommended by friends and family.    Through the growth of digital social networks we now have access to many more consumer opinions. The power of online recommendations has helped Amazon build its business, and this type of social commerce is becoming more and more popular among the e-tailers.

Yes undoubtedly the advertising and marketing industry should fight against draconian & unfair regulation and legislation, but social media is a big and real threat to those who choose to ignore its increasing significance in the lives of people – and therefore its relevance to brands.

Image courtesy of @Tambako the Jaguar http://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako/3852252970/sizes/m/

Facebook’s Flavour of the Day

Ahhh, the Facebook app.  So many brands try to do these, but so few do it well.

Without access to Facebook’s statistics, I believe that Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice has been one of the most successful apps on the platform – at least in terms of buzz.  It encouraged Facebook users to ‘sacrifice’ (delete) 10 of their friends in exchange for a Whopper voucher, and as consequence generated tons of press and dare I say ruined quite a few friendships. Facebook actually shut down this app due to claims that it violated privacy settings (users are not supposed to be notified when their status as a friend has been ‘revoked’). At the time of its termination, the app saw almost 234,000 friends sacrificed for The King.

Vitamin Water’s latest Flavour Creator Application is another example of a brand who has managed to leverage the crowd sourcing function of social media to engage with consumers in a fun way. The page itself boasts 912, 144 fans at the time of this post, as well as very high interaction rates on their wall postings.

The application encourages users to submit a new flavour and vitamin combination, as well as package design, with a $5,000 incentive to the winner.  Other brands have turned to the masses to influence their product lines – the Walkers Do Us A Flavour activity was highly integrated and successful campaign, as well as Revels Eviction, which asked fans to ‘save the one you love, evict the one you hate’.

The Vitamin Water application uses a ‘buzzmeter’ – an aggregation of Twitter, Foodgawker, Google and Flickr feeds – to determine which flavour is being spoken about the most.  From there it determines the 10 most popular flavours and submits them to the ‘Vitamin Water Judges’ (including Carrie Underwood and 50 Cent) to select the winning combination.  This is pretty safe, since the final decision ultimately rests with Vitamin Water’s panel of judges, but is crowd sourcing, nonetheless.

A series of basic old school-themed games are supposed to determine which vitamins you most need and want in the new flavour.  However there’s nothing particularly telling about actual vitamin content needed in the games, despite their simple and somewhat addictive game play.  Perhaps some example of vitamins and their benefits would add to the app’s function and provide a bit of education.

My favourite part of this application, apart from the smooth integration of RSS, gaming, and crowd sourcing, is the cheeky tone of voice, which permeates the Flavour Creator.  The application’s copy is consistently humorous and demonstrates a good understanding of their target audience.

The initial dialogue when you launch the app is, “Hope it’s ok we pulled you away from checking out you ex’s photo gallery… so get cracking, you can always be a stalker later…” This illustrates Vitamin Water’s understanding of both the medium they’re using and how their audience interact with this media (come on, you’ve all done your share of Facebook stalking).

While this isn’t a revolutionary concept by any means (indeed, nothing here is new – RSS feeds, voting, gaming), Vitamin Water has integrated these elements nicely in a fine example of how to engage with your audience by speaking their language and encouraging a dialogue.  The $5,000 incentive can’t hurt either…

I vote for a lime/banana/mint combination with Echinacea vitamin powers … who’s with me…?!?

The third and final Kit Kat promotion this year has gone live, and centres around Music Breaks – with free music download offers on pack.

To support the promotion, we’ve produced three online ad creatives, including these fun rich media banners featuring our very Matt Staff and Dan C, playing ‘the Kit Kat harmonica’.

The message is that there’s a better way to get music from your Kit Kat – and that doesn’t mean using it as a zither, either.

Welcome to skive towers, we will be sure to make your stay memorable

Here at skive we were wondering where all the light in the office had gone. This dimming lead to us bemoaning the short British summer, the onset of SAD, swine flu and a descent in to the wearing of ridiculous hats.  Although these fears were very short lived when we realized it was only a mere shadow cast by our new window signage. Just to note, the other sign, aftershock, was not erected by our neighbours or landlord to advertise their surprise at the size of our ambition.

A few of us here at Skive have banded together to create an Augmented Reality submission for this year’s e4 E Sting competition. For those of you not in the know, E Stings are the short clips that feature between the programs and adverts.

Anyway. Here’s what we came up with:

It was Lee Daley who suggested we make an AR entry. He also did the 3D work. Since then my fiance Juliet Lall has graced the project with some illustrations and Rakesh Mistry has taken control of the video production. I did all the Flash development and took the role of project leader.

15 E Stings will make it on-air and there have been over 750 entries. Let’s hope the lure of a free AR application will improve my chances!

Everyone in skive, on their birthday, is presented with a custom-made card, a cake and the only song we all know the words for. This ritual tends to be followed by some birthday cheer in the fourth meeting space, a room that is cleverly disguised as a pub.

Alas, for our latest recipient, Ben, we had a problem. The cake was stale. So, rather than deprive him and everyone else of some high calorific goodness, we quickly knocked up an alternative – the Beer Birthday Cake (BBC). This was in the spirit of the occasion,  a legendary event sponsored by Ben for his friends: Benny’s Birthday Challenge (BBC), a competition that has been known to make the Norfolk Dispatch of The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

With a little  improvisation, we brought the party to the cake, rather than the cake to the party.