Psfk London

I'm still trying to marshal my thoughts on Friday's psfk conference. I started the day nervous (I was something of a conference novice, and terrified it would be full of hardcore networking that I would be hopeless at), but I needn't have worried.  It was a superb day, I was able to catch up with a lot of my favourite bloggers - lunch with Northern Planner was the biggest treat - and put a few more faces to names. All while trying to absorb the fascinating conversation and thinking that was being presented.

It's going to be a well blogged event and I suspect some of the stuff I learnt is going to inform a fair few posts of my own in the next few weeks. In the meantime I thought I'd record my overall impressions and personal highlights.

If I had to describe the pervasive mood of the day, I would call it uncertain.  There seemed to be swings and shifts between feelings of optimism and pessimism about the future, and a certain amount of discomfort about where marketing is right now.  There was a lot of talk about the need to understand your own values and beliefs in order to have pride in what you do.

In part, I felt this mood was set up by the first morning session.  We had Timo Veilkkola who talked about how Nokia sets about anticipating the human need for communication will manifest in future. Timo ended with an Arthur C Clark quote suggesting that the future will be "utterly fantastic".  This optimism was immediately followed by the fabulous Regine Debatty (the first of four speakers I fell a little bit in love with - nothing serious, this happens to me all the time) who showed us how artists are interpreting cutting-edge biotechnology developments.  It was provocative stuff, and the presentation I've found myself thinking and talking about the most since Friday.  Then came the Marketing Gap in Green panel which was all too short, but enough to really unsettle us and place what Amelia smartly calls the elephant in the room.

After that, some of the discussion around whether 'digital is better than advertising' and 'can planners be the new creatives' seemed a trifle inconsequential.  I don't mean to suggest these discussions weren't interesting (they were), it's just that these intended-to-be-provocations seemed much less so in the context of what had preceded them.

Oh, but as a fiction-fiend I loved the story section.  Jeremy Ettinghausen talked about some of the fantastic experiments in publishing that Penguin have been exploring in the last few years.  They've tried a bunch of things, some worked others didn't, so they've tried to do more stuff that resembles and builds on the stuff that did.  Jeremy was also polite when I acted like a pathetic fan-girl while talking to him later. Then Dan Hon of Mind Candy made my jaw drop as he told of the crazy obsessive behaviour that can be induced by brilliantly complex alternative reality games/stories like Perplexcity.   

There was plenty more, but the Special Topics in Calamity Physics podcast is starting so I'll leave it there for now...

Comments

[Amelia Torode]

Agree with you about the day - Regina and the green guys for me opened things up in a way that others didn't. Whether digital is better than advertising, planners are the new creative, pink is the new grey kind of seemed a bit pointless in comparison
Good to meet you!
A

[Charles Frith]

Nice post Helen. Had to shake off a little crush foreign accent crush myself. Not the only one of the day either.
Naughty me :)

[lauren]

"... I fell a little bit in love with - nothing serious, this happens to me all the time".. happens to me all the time too!

[RachelC]

Hi; got here via Dan Hon's blog. Lived your description of being a conference novice, as I know exactly how you feel. Keep persevering though; I'm quite happy to say that going to conferences, meeting new people, starting a blog all got me where I am now, a new job in a new country. It's fun!

[np]

It was lovely to meet you too!

Charles, stop it.