Reporting on Picnic08

We came back from Picnic08 late last night and today has been a relaxing day. A bit of reading, some motorcycling, watching a fascinating documentary (see previous post) and time to look back at a hectic few weeks.

As my twitter-followers know we had a big announcement to make yesterday at Picnic. ONE Agency launched it's first office abroad in Amsterdam. We now also have "Hollandse Maatjes" (Dutch Friends but also typical Dutch Haring) as you can see in the little movie we made for the occasion.

Unfortunately I did not see all of Picnic but I did get a flavour of what was going on. Two topics struck me:

1. SOCIAL
Everything seems to go Social these days, in fact the word social fell so many times that we were completely over-social-ed by the end of the day. I gues social is now what 'rich internet' was a few years ago (and standard today). So expect social to be standard in a few years.
I did note an important cultural difference between what goes on in The Netherlands and Belgium. In Belgium protecting your turf is most web-entrepreneurs' main concern. That is why we have a lot of trouble selling 'OpenID' to our customers. It means they have to give up their fetish for customer data and e-mail adresses and be happy with getting traffic. And that is a no-go in Belgium.
Our biggest Dutch customer Achmea however said to me (sorry Dutch, difficult to translate): "Om te groeien moet je eerst kunnen delen, zoals celdeling." That to me is something to live by if you want to be successfull in the social space.
I mostly attended "Gaming go social" (as I was on a panel there) and rumours say this was the best part of Picnic08. Nothing to do with my performance but I must say the guys from Ex Machina did a great job in getting an interesting line-up of speakers there.

2. INTERNET OF THINGS
A bit further away from day-to-day reality is all that concerns the "Internet of Things". The geeky crowd seemed to love the RFID based projects presented there, not the least tikitag (our customer) who'll be the first on the market with this type of appplication (check out tikitag.com for more info).
During the launch drink of ONE Agency Nederland we tagged all the haring (well, the flags I mean) with tikitags and with the tag you could win or not win a crate of Gentsen Tripel. How's that for mixing cultures, Dutch fish with Belgian beer. There again we saw a lot of intrest from the people present. Looks like we've got another project on our hands that sell best if you can first experiënce it.

Take some time to watch this Italien documentary ...

Really, take the time to watch all 10 pieces. It's worth while, no drama, no bullshit, just facts that'll make you think and who knows, wake you up.

In a panel at Picnic tomorrow

Tomorrow I'm part of a panel in the "Games go Social" part of Picnic in Amsterdam. It's realy cool to be able to share ideas and thoughts with such an impressive panel:
Panel members: Shervin Pishevar (SGN), Maximilian Niederhofer (Atlas Venture), Kristian Segerstråle (Playfish) and myself of course.

Our moderator Yme Bosma has prepared the agenda, so if you have ideas don't hesitate to post them in the comments here.

Looking at my co-panel members' CV's I have a feeling we'll talk mostly about minigames played within social networks, however I think there are a lot of opportunities to gather casual gamers who play on consoles (e.g. Wii) on social networking platforms. Long time ago I made a proposal for that for Telenet but they stuck with hardcore gamers (and babe-lovers) with their 9Lives site.

Anyway, see you in Amsterdam ...

PS
Keep a lookout for ONE Agency news tomorrow. I'm not in Amsterdam for Picnic alone (check the agenda)

tikitag is so cool (got a fun idea to work out)

tikitag from Bart De Neve on Vimeo

Apple doesn't like it's iPhone customers (tx to Mobistar)

I'm not really the whining type of guy, but the hypocrit way in which Apple treats it's iPhone customers in Belgium totally pisses me off.

About TWO MONTHS ago I ordered an iPhone at my regular Apple dealer. You know, the guys where I've bought like 4 or 5 macs and loads of accessories with. Untill now I heard nothing from them.
On the other side, I could go into a Mobistar shop and order an iPhone. If I tell them I'll take a subscription with them, I can have the phone in ONE WEEK.

What do I learn:
1. Apple doesn't give a damn about it's customers.
2. Apple takes a piss at it's official dealers.
3. Mobistar must have a great negotiation skills training in the house ...
4. But all of this is generating a lot of negative energy towards Mobistar

Hey guys at Apple, there are limits to the amount of goodwill a great products creates. Give your customers a break and serve them on a fair first-come-first-serve basis.

Technorati Tags: iPhone, Mobistar, Apple

tikitag presented to the public for the first time

tikitag, a venture by Alcatel-Lucent, presented for the first time to the public at DEMO FALL 08. ONE Agency is tikitag's agency, we've been their partner for the whole trajectory ranging from strategy over logo design to the website and the interactive communication. More about tikitag in the months to come.