Mat Lewis on Top of Emerging Creativity in Margaret River, Western Australia, last week.
1. Making the World a Better Place. Many of the world's best and brightest creatives are focused on making money but also making the world a better place, proving profits and good deeds can mix. Perth-based social media marvel Ming Johanson has a checklist for new projects. 'Does it serve me, others, my business, and the greater good?' Speakers assisted a staggering number of charities. Jimmy Niggles from the Beard Season, US-based Justin Gignac from Working Not Working, were two who have donated extraordinary amounts of time and effort to great causes.
2. The Google guys from Tokyo, Tim Sneddon and Gene Brutty, (originally from Perth) rocked. Their 20 slide presentation in 20 minutes with gems such as 'uncomfortable is good, stay there' and 'waiting is for the lazy' was only topped by their Artificial Intelligence workshop, with kits. Awesome, inspiring, learnt so much.
3. The gen below the millennials/Gen Z are are into fun, says Neil Ackland of Punkee Media. They are often watching video without sound, and looking for short/mashable/home-made/funny/quirky clips about random stuff that doesn't have to matter or mean something. Punkee is hiring super young, clever creatives that can write, shoot and edit, at a fast pace. If brands want to target the kids, then make it fast paced and random/funny.
4. Lightbulb moment. Why aren't staff of the companies/organisations Perth Media works for embracing social media of their employers? Well, aside from the fact it could be crap. 'Because they have their own personal brand, and they don't want to link their brand with your company/organisation because they don't want to hang around for long,' says Perth-based Ming Johanson, who tells it how it is.
Ming Johanson generously shared social media wisdom
5. Mat Lewis, Erin Molloy and team at Emergence are seriously good at what they do. The room was filled with exceptional global talent, including Chloe Rickard (Jungle Entertainment who just produced ABC's Squinters); international photographer Sam Harris; music industry lawyer Fran Cotton; Phil Bonanno of Facebook and many many more. Unbelievable line-up all in Margaret River. Really, this festival exceeded expectations.
6. AI as a tool, linked with google, has a long way to go, but it is coming. It wasn't too clever in demos, but it successfully answered qus about the weather. Lots of ramifications. IE clients can ask google what it thinks of their company. Here is our CEO Cate putting AI Google kit through its paces.
Putting the AI kit together to talk to Google
