So last night was my first experience of the YCC-organised UNITE event, hosted at Cargo in Shoreditch, throwing a load of graduate creatives and their carefully assembled folios in front of a load of industry veterans and their carefully hidden cynicism.

It didn’t bode well, shoddily arranged on Champions League Semi Final Second Leg night with United holding a tenuous two nil aggregate lead and fielding a much-changed team. My thoughts were as black as the cab I trundled over in.

Inside Cargo, however, the place was buzzing with youthful exuberance, so I left my cynicism at the door, pinned a lopsided Y badge onto my trendy man-cardy and mingled with the next generation of advertising talent.

It takes a lot of guts to spend an evening showing complete strangers your work, so I resolved to be kind and attentive. Sadly, I’m a tactless twit who never hides his disdain well, so apologies to the young folk who may have suffered either my vacant stare, non-committal ‘Hmmmm’ or downturned face.

Luckily, I think those instances were few and far between – largely because the quality was generally pretty good, and I was well-lubricated by the £10 minimum spend at the bar, which I selfishly chose to lavish upon myself each round rather than buy any of my peers a pint.

Like all good creatives, I managed to avoid doing any actual work for a while, ducking out to Bar Kick to catch snatches of the Reds causing German misery. But it’s testament to the event that I actually ran back ay half time to sneak in a quick crit, as well as leaving before the final whistle, denying me the pleasure of witnessing any actual German tears or players on knees.

Everyone seemed to be loving the night (“It’s epic!” said a voice at my side at one point, something which I thought was only attributed to Hilary Mantel novels or Danish police procedurals).

No, epic it wasn’t. But it was well-organised, packed with people who came despite being officially chosen but managed to peddle their wares nonetheless (which I admired), and well-supported by industry folk.

While my memory is understandably hazy, I do recall being slightly underwhelmed by the lack of digital executions; do I really need to see a third iteration of an idea in print? But I see that everywhere and it’s a common lament. Also interesting was the common mistake that people with smart phones all use iPhones and have the incredible ability to read tiny text. Andy Sandoz  has some better and more insightful feedback on book crits you should read.

Anyway, I’ll be going again, if the next one doesn’t clash with a crucial England qualifier or a Radiohead secret gig or something. And I’ll try to look at more work, and say stuff more constructive than ‘Oh, I like this’, or ‘No, doesn’t work for me’.  And I’ll hand out more cards, and I’ll try to drink less, and not call the barman a toad.

The last day of SXSW saw Skive hit the Conference hard, despite missing the 9.30 sessions as usual.

Both Sean and I went to a panel on the Luxury / Digital Paradox: Taking Luxury Brands Online, an interesting discussion on how to maintain what makes brands luxury at the same time as become far more accessible to the masses.

Next, Sean went to Realtime Marketing in a Connected World session featuring Blackberry and Foursquare - while I went off to buy an iPad2 from the Apple Pop Up Store. Apple had craftily chosen to launch iPad2 at Austin during SXSW, and the shop was policed by members of the local sheriff’s department while a constant queue of technophiles streamed in. I got a white 64GB Wi-Fi + 3G with a black leather snap-on cover. It’s the business.

Meanwhile, Sean was seeing one of the most inspiring talks of the festival as Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes recalled the inspiration and implementation of his ground-breaking business, based on the principal of ‘One for One’ – every time you buy a pair of shoes from TOMS, they give a pair to someone so poor they don’t own any shoes at all. Amazing.

Last up was the closing talk by South By legend Bruce Sterling, who delivered a stirring, angry and hilarious diatribe aimed at motivating the ‘new millennials’ to drive change for good around the globe. He’s an amazing orator, and his rhetoric and language delivered in his Texan drawl as he tore into Berlosconi and Corporate America was simply hypnotic.

It’s been a full-on week and our brains – not to mention our bodies – are mashed. Back to Blighty now – one last post to come: SXSW Nights…

 

Sean chronicled the Day Four on behalf of both of us. This is what he had to say...

"As a SXSW virgin, my overall impression is that it’s all pretty overwhelming. It is big and it is clever.

The choice of presentations (30 an hour) is incredible and the range of subjects is mind-blowing. After my first day I felt inspired and exhausted in equal measure.  The whole vibe is friendly, quirky and intelligent – so not sure if Louis and I fit in!

Someone described it as Spring Break for Geeks, which is spot on. Nearly everybody has glasses and beards – sometimes, even the women. We have met lots of fellow Brits from other agencies (such as DKLW Lowe, Glue, Poke, Outside Line, tobias & tobias, We Are Social and Doremus). I would definitely recommend The Barbarian Group Guide to SXSW for any first-timer, which is pretty much perfect.

I have seen talks on running meetings, making agencies act more like software houses, selling on social networks, social games and augmented reality.  The networking opportunities are incredible as is the opportunity to consume alcohol.

So what did we do today?

One theme of this year’s SXSW is the incredible focus on using digital for social good. Therefore my first session was You Can Impact Charity Without Being Rich. It was a panel session with 5 people who work in charity / corporate responsibility arena in Texas. One of the panelists asked the audience to put their hands in the air if they volunteer.  I was the only person in the audience who did not raise their hand. I will blog more about this session on my personal blog (bloke to Buddha).

Louis’ first session of the day seemed designed especially within him in mind – I Am So Productive, I Never Get Anything Done, a panel session discussing whether we control digital tools, or do they control us.

Louis also attended Enabling New Experiences: Creating Serendipity Through Check-Ins – A conversation between Pete Cashmore (Mashable) and Dennis Crowley (Co-founder of Four Square). This was definitely one for the ladies at SXSW as these two (like Louis and myself) are both digital pin-up boys. It was a very engaging and fascinating session and Dennis Crowley was very, very impressive.

After a quick walk around the Trade Show I went to see the keynote speech – Felicia Day.  She is a US actress who developed The Guild – an online TV show about gamers. To be honest, I had never heard of her until today but she apparently is massive. There was some cynicism about why she was speaking at all as she is more of celebrity than the typical digital keynote speaker.  However, I thought she was really bright and insightful. Also very funny. And hot!

My final session was Company Culture:  It’s Your Fault. This was a packed, interactive session run by Greg Hoy, the President of the impressive Happy Cog. It was full of great ideas and excellent contributions from Greg and the audience.

 

Day Three of a cloudy Austin began with a futile attempt to attend a Yoga class for Sean, while I snored happily on after the best night out so far, catching the Yelp party, Frog Design party and Nokia party with a brief interlude trying to track down a Twitterstorm.

My first session was billed as Transmedia Storytelling: Constructing Compelling Characters and Narrative Threads. It was wildly disappointing, and it was a welcome relief to walk out.

Sean meanwhile had opted to listen to Tim Ferriss speak on his book, The 4 Hour Body, which was packed and full of fans.

We hooked up in the Hilton with a seeming dearth of interesting sessions to attend. Deciding to troll the ‘salons’, we eventually pipped on the tenth and final of its rooms and a panel billed as The Future Enernet, about how geeks can participate in solving the energy challenge and what can the future of energy looks like.

It was brilliant, fronted by the eminent Bob Metcalfe, founder of 3Com and inventor of the ethernet and who, as I tweeted to public amusement, looked a little like a pre-eminent version of the late Leslie Nielson. He spoke with articulate persuasion on the failings and learnings in the energy field and our need to move as fast on energy problems as we have done in the digital spectrum.

After that it was the keynote speech by Christopher ‘m00t’ Poole, founder of 4Chan, after which Sean slightly ironically went to a session entitled 7 Reasons Why Your Employees Hate You.

Finally, I ducked into another walkout – a panel about Awesome Internet Design – before hooking up at the Chinwag tent for a beer and a little networking, the prelude to the evening’s entertainment.

 

Day two in Austin started in a markedly different way and is a sure sign of things to come: no relaxed breakfast here, but a rushed coffee as we dragged ourselves out of bed after a night of revelry at three parties and grabbed a cab to the Convention Centre.

Sadly, the first session we saw – on the Future of Online Shopping – was incredibly poor. As Sean tweeted during a flood of walkouts, “Even the speaker’s chair is trying to leave the room”. Afterwards, as we sat wondering what to see next, a guy from Best Buy in charge of Mobile came up if it really had been as bad as it seemed.

The lack of any food in our bellies caught up with us and we decided to get some nosh at the Iron Cactus, an Austin institution. We were joined by Andy and Jonty, who maliciously forced our first drink upon us – a Cactus Slushie laced with Tequila. Oh my.

We decided to watch the afternoon’s Keynote Speech by Seth Priebatsch of SCVNGR on the ‘game layer’ over our lives from the comfort of the Driskill Bar and a Dos Equis or two. Sadly, we found out all too late they had double-booked the room, a rare organisational fail.

We headed back to the Convention Centre and wandered around Screenburn, the games trade show, and then on to a session on Storytelling through Advertising presented by Zynga and Gaia, which while interesting enough was effectively a way for the two companies to show off the fact that they’re making a ton of money.

Sean and I split for the last session. He went off to catch an interesting session on AR for Marketeers fronted by R/GA and Porter Novelli. Meanwhile, I decided to learn How to Sell Unsolicited Ideas, with panellists from Droga5, Contagious and co:collective.  I didn’t really learn how, but it was interesting to hear a little about the Jay-Z – Bing book launch.

Finally, we’ve said goodbye to the Barton Creek hotel and swapped it for new digs at the W. No more interminable taxi rides into Austin.

 

The first day of SXSW saw Sean and I rise a little groggily and attack breakfast with gusto – Sean treating it like a 3 course meal, while I was unable to resist a Texan version of Eggs Benedict served with a spicy jalapeno hollandaise.  My body isn’t used to such early fiery fuel.

After a leisurely shower we drove into a gloriously sunny Downtown and met Seb Royce and Dom O’Brien from Glue, as well as Skive stalwart Jim Hall, invited here as a nominee in the Interactive Festival for his Isle of Tune.

We then hooked up with Jonty Sharples from tobias & tobias and Andy Beaumont from Outside Line and sat soaking up rays and sipping SoBe sodas until the first session – extremely pertinent to Skive: Your Meetings Suck & It’s Your Fault, a terrific presentation from Kevin Hoffman, Director of User Design at Happy Cog.  Many lessons to be learned and applied right across the agency, and he was happy to send us his deck.

Sean and I then split up. He ducked into Do Agencies Need to Think Like Software Companies, while I chose to experience the perennially popular Battledecks – where industry bigwigs have to comically adlib for ten minutes through a presentation they’ve never seen. This year’s was full of pie charts featuring Justin Bieber, Charlie Sheen and Hitler.

Sadly, the last session of the day was a let down. Billed as The Singularity is HERE – (when computers exceed our intelligence), the first 10 minutes were little more than self-promotion for presenter Todd Marks and his company Mindgrub, and it didn’t get any better. We voted with our feet and left for a taxi back to Barton Creek for a quick refresh before dinner and the evening’s entertainment.

 

So I'm off to South by South West with Skive for the Interactive Festival again, this year joined by Group Managing Partner Sean Singleton.

Sean almost certainly doesn’t know what he’s letting himself in for – as evinced by his enquiries into local Bikram Yoga classes in Downtown Austin, and the thought that he might sneak in a round of golf.

I was a veteran of more than 20 sessions and 97 parties last year (easily) – so I've tried to prep Sean for the experience over the last few weeks, waterboarding him with Maker’s Mark, stacking endless racks of babyback ribs before him, and most importantly filling his mind with enough digital stimuli to power Wolfram Alpha for a week.

Because that’s what SXSWi is all about, really. It’s Industry Berocca – an effervescent mix of theory, insight and forward-thinking, a sharing of information and new technology that is both exciting and relevant, and a gathering of some of the finest minds in what was formerly called New Media.

 

So it's just over a month to South by Southwest. I can't believe it's come around so soon; I still haven't really digested last year's whirlwind visit to Austin.

There are bits of it I'm not sure I remember fully. 

That's partly to do with the nature of the event: 6 days of panels, talks and lectures. Popping into one, ducking into another. Trudging round the Convention Centre wondering when's a good time to eat. Soaking it up. Networking.

And it's also partly to do with Matt Don. 

Matt was my SXSW mentor, roomie and erstwhile partner in crime. He showed me the best places to get a rack of ribs, and he tipped me the wink on some of the better sessions I saw.

And, of course, he was my drinking buddy. Look, there we are, at the Tumblr party. 

Ah, happy days. 

This year will undoubtedly be very different. For a start, Matt's got a new roomie (good luck, Oli). I'm flying out with Sean, Skive Managing Partner and notoriously absent-minded klutz. I can already see him strutting his stuff on empty dancefloors now, oblivious to the withering looks of 19 year old Texan college girls.

I'm going to plan what I see a bit better (although, like being trackside at the races, you hear buzz about a particular session on the day you never thought you wanted to attend).

I'm going to see a movie (missing Winter's Bone last time round still rankles, while catching American: the Bill Hicks Story was a highlight).

And I'm going to be more about the people: it was the conversation that I remember and valued most, not the big names (Daniel Ek of Spotify, Evan Williams of Twitter) or the big themes (Social Media, Privacy, HTML 5). And the stimuated conversation from the likes of Bruce Stirling, Clay Shirky, Andrew Keane and Doug Rushkoff.

I'm going to miss my crew - Rob Corradi, Andy Beaumont, Kevin Coffey, Lara Lebeiko. But I'm sure they'll be replaced with another bunch of Maker's Mark-loving cronies.

And someone else to serenade the bear.

Recently, I was invited to Stockholm for a digital industry shindig in the form of Swedish Podge. The trip included a tour of Hyper Island for those that could make it a day early, which was a great chance to look around the renowned University and get an understanding of the approach and process that consistently turns out high calibre graduates primed to work in our ever-changing industry.

After Hyper Island CEO Mattias Hansson had finished showing us round, we were invited to participate in a workshop lead by the students, to demonstrate their methodology. We were divided into 8 groups and asked to brainstorm what groups thought the best job title might be in the 2020s, before presenting back. Despite a very early start including a flight from the UK, the experience was fresh and invigorating – and moreover, fun. Somehow, after discussing upcoming technology largely inspired by the film Minority Report, my group arrived at the conclusion that there could be no better industry profession than to be appointed the HoloPorn User Experience Tester…

Grabbing a coffee after the workshop, I was brazenly approached by one of the super-confident students. She explained that as part of her course the students had divided themselves into groups, and were tasked with ‘pitching’ themselves to an agency. However, her group had decided it might be better to go one step further, and wanted to offer themselves to an agency for a week; were we interested in taking 8 students over to London for five days...?

The answer was yes, obviously. Not only was I excited at the prospect of introducing them to our company so they could get a practical feel for what it’s like to work in an agency, but I also hoped that some of their enthusiasm and fresh approach could rub off on our staff – from creatives to designers, producers to account teams.

This benevolence wasn’t entirely altruistic, of course. As an up-and-coming digital agency recently named number 69 in the NMA Top 100, we want to forge links with Hyper Island so that students consider Skive | Soup along with other digital agencies in the UK for internships. We also saw pretty quickly that this could be a good way to get some PR, and approached New Media Age with a view to writing a feature.

Less than a month later, and the students were sitting in our office in Clerkenwell, encamped in the boardroom. In the interim period, we had approached several charities with the opportunity of having 8 of the brightest young digital minds work on a brief for a week. As a result, The NSPCC and ActionAid had expressed interest, and we were delighted that they agreed to come round to the office to deliver the brief in person, explaining both the work that they do and the specific problems they face.

Because of the Charity interest (addressing which we felt was a far more useful than simply getting the students to tackle our own client briefs), we decided to call the group our ‘Hyper Helpers’, which we used as a hashtag on Twitter and a blog which the students used to chronicle their experience across the week.

The five days passed in a whirl. The first day was used as an induction to the company, with an internal presentation of the work that we do, and a further one showcasing our thoughts on applying current digital trends to brands, and the future of digital. We also set them an internal brief – to explore the neighbourhood with outsiders’ eyes and show us our surroundings afresh.

And while we were more than happy to expose them to our hospitality and take them on a Shoreditch bar crawl, they rewarded us with hard work, staying late into the evening every night, and attacking the difficult briefs the way they had been taught to, the evidence of which – hundreds of coloured Post-It notes – was plain for everyone to see on the walls of the Boardroom.

On the Thursday, they invited the staff to participate in a similar workshop to the one we’d witnessed in Stockholm, and it’s indicative of the impression they had made and the intrigue about Hyper that every single person in the agency who was not on an imminent deadline attended. The task this time: to brainstorm a new way to celebrate winning pitches.

The following day, a journalist and photographer from NMA arrived to take photos and undertake a short interview of each Hyper Helper. Then at 2pm and 4pm, the students presented their ideas back to the charities. Both were exceptionally pleased and surprised at the quality of response in the short time they’d had – one even saying they wanted to implement one of the executions the next day.

Even though we’d had minimal involvement with the briefs except a little bit of creative review and a few pointers, we felt immensely proud of them. As a result, we’ve decided we’d like to try to do this annually. It was something of an experiment this year, with neither the students, nor the agency and indeed the Charities themselves knowing quite what to expect, and naturally there have been lots of learnings. For example, it would be better to have one brief, and delve a bit deeper into the insight, demographics, user journey and design mock ups than present such top line thinking.

It was interesting to see that amongst the clever experiential campaigns, striking illustration portfolios, inspiring digital interaction and the latest from CP+B, WK or Goodby was some good old fashioned print.

I've been an admirer of the recent Dixons print campaign by M&C Saatchi since it launched in September. Few brands attempt long copy ads (I can only remember VW and Ford in the last six months) but I think these are great - a perfect mix of placement, message and media (the London Underground is where I've encountered them).

At the heart of the campaign is good planning insight: people increasingly shop for goods online but quite like to see the products in the flesh first (it was predicted that 93% of consumers planned to shop for their Christmas gifts online in 2009 according to eDigital Research). The strapline makes you think twice because it's seemingly negative: "Dixons.co.uk. The last place you want to go." Then there's the creative itself, playfully sending up John Lewis, Selfridges and Harrods, which has naturally incensed the high street giants and generated a bit of healthy PR in the process. And it also shows Dixons know their place - not in our hearts but perhaps in our wallets.

But it's the Christmas iteration I really like, which was also voiced by David Mitchell for radio. The fonts in the other ads nod to the brands they're riffing, but this last is more generic and the resulting page is straight from Dickens, replete with odious caricature in Cedric Prattletwerp. Lovely.

I still wouldn't shop at Dixons.co.uk if you nailed my balls to a chair...