Was just doing some late night Saturday night browsing (yes I am a geek) and came across the new Symantec ad campaign for the 2010 version of their Norton Internet Security suite- Now I don’t even use Norton (I’m on Mac na na na naaaa na) But these ads are funny…finally companies are realizing that a way to people’s wallets is entertainment- well done!
My favorite: No chickens were harmed in the making:
This one is good too! Starring street fighter’s Kimbo
Well I couldn’t go all the way to Iceland without accosting an Icelandic startup to pitch- could I?! Iceland’s startup scene is bustling and I managed to hunt out Gunnar Hólmsteinn, CEO of Icelandic Startup Clara.is Check out their funky site. This is the funniest pitch I’ve done to date (I think it’s got something to do with being in the Blue Lagoon)- soooo much fun! Oh..yes..just had a thought… that could be the new Techfluff.TV challenge: doing elevator pitches in weird/exciting places… suggestions for weird/exciting places please! Leave them in the comments:)
Plus before I went to Iceland I poped ‘Tech People’ into Google and Hjörtur Smárason’s name came up! I sure I kept embarrassing him by calling him the Marketing King, but it’s true, Hjortur has dome some amazing social media campaigns and was a speaker at Jeff Pulver’s 140 Characters Conference. Amongst other things Hjortur is CEO of Scope Communications and you can check out his blog here and follow him on Twitter here. Here we talk strange theories into Iceland’s economic meltdown, the Icelandic startup scene, his guerrilla marketing campaign, the history of the blue lagoon, life , love, and the universe (…ok so not those last three).
Previously an anthropologist, Hjörtur talks about how social media is changing the way we communicate plus Mike Butcher will be proud, I ask about Iceland’s startup scene.
Hjörtu’s current projects.
Hjörtur talks about why he’s a Twitter Character: Live Tweeting the birth of his son and is guerrilla marketing campaign.
About the Blue Lagoon:
I’ve just finished at the Seedcamp breakfast briefing where besides feeding London’s tech journos with scrambled egg, Seedcamp announced the winning finalists for Seedcamp Week coming up 21st-25th September 2009. You can see the finalists over at TechCrunch at 1pm, but…drum roll please… they’ve also announced some exciting changes to the way they are running Seedcamp Week next year. They are launching The X Factor for startups across Europe- Lets call it The Tech Factor!
They will hold mini one day Seedcamps in countries across Europe, the winners of these mini Seedcamps will move to London in the summer and be provided with accommodation and mentoring to prepare them for Seedcamp week next year. To get a place in for the final, where the winners gain investment and a strong worldwide network, startups will have to attend the mini Seedcamp days in their local city to go through to the final at Seedcamp camp week September 201o.
Saul Klein will be the ‘Simon Cowell’ of Tech- lets just hope he’s not wearing the high waisted trousers!
Video coming soon.
Lovely to see some familiar faces here at the #beampresents tech showcase @girlygeekdom @cupcate and others testing out four gadget and tech related products/sites.
Newspepper are producing some high production videos of all the products and voxpops, but in the mean time I’ve been Twitvid-ing away.
So if you’ve missed them on Twitter here they are again, here are some of the companies showcasing:
IWOOT is a prominent “Online shop”online retailer offering a selection of Gadget,gizmos, toys, home and office accessories as well as organised adventures. IWOOT is the place to shop for Christmas gifts that are fun, irreverent and entertaining.
Interead is the British company behind the COOL-ER and CoolerBOOKS.com.
The COOL-ER eReader is one of the lightest, most affordable and most user-friendly eReader on the market.
CoolerBOOKS.com, its companion ebookstore, is currently one of the largest ebookstores in the world
Econav is a satellite navigation in-car device made by Vexia, an innovative technology brand founded by Spanish company Crambo.
The device shows you in real time the most economical and ecological way to drive.
And my fav, the sexy Apple-esk sound system that’s only £5000 for Christmas please? http://www.fergusonhill.co.uk/
104 years-old this week, Ivy Bean is the world’s oldest Twitter and Facebook user. There was some debate over if it was actually Ivy Tweeting or if it was a news organization/PR company that has put her on the social networks to get some hits. CCN’s done a little video- do you think it’s really granny doing all this?
An idol of mine from a young age since watching Tomorrow’s World with my mum and a pin up for geeks across the UK, Maggie Philbin tested many of the everyday gadgets we now take for granted which were demonstrated, by her, on live television for the very first time – the first truly mobile phone, the first car navigation system, the first fax machine, even the first supermarket barcode reader.You Tweeted, We asked:
She’s probably gonna kill me for putting this video up of her with Noel Edmonds, when they formed the one-hit wonder band Brown Sauce and had a No. 15 hit with “I Wanna Be A Winner” in 1981- but I really love the song, it’s catchy!
Doesn’t it really suck when you’re staying at a hotel with crap WiFi or a shitty TV? Design Hotels has put this list together of some of the most stylish top tech hotels out there.
From the Nokia Tablet 8800´s to be used as electronic concierges, Xbox Elites and custom loaded yellow iPods, both on demand at the Condesa DF hotel in Mexioco city, to the carbon footprint calculator for guests at the Klaus K hotel in Helsinki, this list of hotels will get you dribbling over your keyboard in tech goodies excitement.
Design Hotels is also doing some really cool stuff with social media and they are supporters of Charity:Water, do make sure you follow their Twitter account.
Now…all I need to do is test if the hotels’ are really as good as they say they are… Pro bono room to test please!? Video coming soon..I hope!…please?…Pretty Please?!
Police were called as fifteen fashion designers boycotted Iceland Fashion Week’s finale show last night in protest the stage was ‘too ugly’ for their collections.
A crowd of about 500 Icelanders gathered on Reykjanes Harbour to watch the show featuring the collections of eighteen designers who had traveled from all over the world, some as far as Brazil.
Police were called by organisers to go back stage minutes before the show was about to start to stop designers showing their work on the pavement behind the main catwalk as they insisted the pavement, with its backdrop of the stone sea wall, would show off their collections better than the ‘ugly’ plastic covered stage.
Put together to help unknown talent get exposure and promote designers ‘whose interests may not lead them to the catwalks of London, New York, Paris or Milan, but whose talents are just as viable,’ says their site, most of the designers invited to Iceland Fashion Week are student/graduate or up and coming designers who came for exposure and a good set of photos.
But they protested that the catwalk, set upon crates of plastic water bottles from Gold sponsor Icelandic Glacial water, was ugly and would make their collection look cheap and photos ugly.
Close to tears, New York designer Kaytee P told me she felt misled by the allure of the website which promised (like previous years when the catwalk was set against the backdrop of a glacier) she would be showing her collection against the backdrop of the Rekjanes harbour at the Walk on Water show and not literally walking her models’ out on crates of water.
Spending weeks of hard work and the all the money she has as a’ struggling designer’ putting her collection together for the show, she compared her refusal to show her collection on the stage to that of ‘eating caviar out of a toilet bowl’.
Anger towards the organisers was rife with one designer demanding to know where the sponsorship money had gone when neither models nor hair and makeup were getting paid to work at the event.
Romanian designer, Catalin Botezatu went ahead with showing his collection on the main catwalk. “It’s not about the stage, It’s about the collection,” he told me. “If your collection is good It doesn’t matter if it’s shown in front of a wall or a rubbish dump, the collection will carry itself, I came all this way to do a show and that’s exactly what I did, you have to be professional”
Meanwhile, backstage an apparent voice of the designers’ revolution, Karelle Levy, designer behind the collection Krelwear, had just convinced Police to allow her and the rest of the protesting designers’ to show on the pavement when rain set in making it impossible for either the main catwalk or the pavement catwalk to continue due to lack of shelter from rain.
Organiser of the Fashion Week Kolbrun Adalstiensdottir rallied the (by this time freezing) Icelandic models and designers back onto the bus insisting they show true Icelandic spirit by continuing the show whatever the weather and despite the others’ boycott of the event, and after an approx hour wait for the rain to clear that’s exactly what they did and three Icelandic designers showed their collection.
By this time the boycotting designers’, with the help of the co-organizer Andrew Lockhart, organized their own show in a night club in Reykjavik which took place around midnight on Sat.
And that, my friends, is what took place at Iceland fashion week 2009! Phew, that was painful to relive. Was Iceland Fashion Week 09′ badly organised? Was it misleading by the website and organisers ? Or did the designer’s egos’ get in the way of themselves, demanding and expecting New York style opulence from a country which is recovering from bankruptcy and economic meltdown?
I recon’ it’s a mixture of both, there were a number of major organizational issues throughout the week and at the final show that contributed to pent up anger and stress among the group and at the same time ego can get in the way of professionalism
Although the designers’ paid for their flights, accommodation was free with a number of free dinners in some of Iceland’s top restaurants thrown in, the designers had been invited to help them gain exposure where normally they could not afford to show (designers normally have to pay lots of put on shows). Should they have been more grateful?
Was it dull, frivolous snotty fashion industry bitching? yes. was it important? no. umm.. maybe. Was it a mini revolution unfolding before our eyes? yes. Does it matter? no. Has it driven me insane? slightly more than I already was. yes.
Arrrgghhh, fashion… get me back to technology! Actually had a great tech fix on Sunday doing an elevator pitch at the Blue Lagoon with one of Iceland’s startup co-founders and also an interview with one of Iceland’s top social media marketers – see/hear more about in my next posts!
What do you think? Is this stage ugly? Does it matter matter what the stage looked like?
Hi! As you may (or not) know I’m on limited email access in Iceland covering Fashion Week-
I’m on a tight, exhausting schedule from 9am -1am every day so it’s hard for me to post!
Having loads of fun but getting Internet withdrawal symptoms…will be back on Sunday! Make sure you come and watch the film District 9 on Tuesday with us (whole bunch of London tech scene peeps) . -More details here
In the meantime, Here’s a weird fish we caught:
and a really cool dock catwalk – the clothes look great against the backdrop of the ocean!
Having fun at Iceland Fashion Week, went on a little tour of the east side and came across this Church acting rather like a VC fund. Visitors and Tourists visit, make a wish and if the wish comes true they have to give a donation/percentage of their wish earnings back to the pastor/Church.
Lexus held a shooot at their car show room.
