I’ll always remember 2006 as the year I discovered blogging - it’s been enormous fun, I’ve made new connections online and offline with lots of great people and it feels as though I’ve learned a huge amount in a few short months. Best of all, I still feel like I’m at the beginning of something special and I’ve got loads of ideas for developing Wishful Thinking and other projects in 2007.

So I’d like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who has read, commented, linked, e-mailed and otherwise connected with this blog in 2006. Special thanks to the interviewees who have brought the audio channel to life for the podcast series.

I’m supposed to be having a week off for Christmas but may pop in for a quick post or two. In any case I’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a creative and fulfilling 2007.

I’m very pleased that Mark Earls is the next interviewee in this series on Perceptions of Coaching in the UK Creative Industries, as his book Welcome to the Creative Age was one of the inspirations behind the project - particularly his concept of the “accelerator manager”, whose job is to “help my people get a better job next time”.

Mark Earls is one of the leading thinkers about brands, marketing and consumer behaviour. He has been described variously as “one of the Advertising scene’s foremost contrarians” and “the Christopher Hitchens of advertising and marketing”. But mostly he just refuses to accept received wisdom and is determined to make us all think a bit harder to get better results.

Mark has been an account planner for most of his working life. He has held senior positions in some of the largest and most influential communications companies in the world - his last job was as chair of Ogilvy’s Global Planning Council, prior to which he was Planning Director at the revolutionary St. Luke’s Communications. He was Vice Chair of the The Account Planning Group and has judged a number of awards competitions in the UK and abroad for communications and marketing effectiveness and innovation and even collaboration between arts and business.

His written work has regularly won awards from his peers and is considered by many to be amongst the most influential being written today. His first book, Welcome to the Creative Age, was widely read and discussed and has been translated into several languages. Dominic Mills of Campaign Magazine called it, “the book that Naomi Klein should have written”.

His latest book, Herd: how to change mass behaviour by harnessing our true nature challenges our Western received wisdom about mass behaviour and develops an alternative model rooted in our ‘Herd’ nature and has already received strong endorsement from other leading practitioners and theorists both in the US and the UK. The story continues on Mark’s blog, a welcome recent addition to the conversation.

Mark is in much demand as conference speaker around the world – in recent years he has spoken in the UK, USA, Argentina, France, Estonia, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Spain. He lives in North London and is currently preparing his next book and doing the odd bit of consulting for interesting companies and people.

The video is of “the greatest try ever scored”, by the Barbarians v the All Blacks in 1973. Mark refers to it in the interview as an example of both good coaching and the limits of the coach’s influence, pacing on the touchline while the players are out on the pitch.

Mark’s interview is a great way to draw the research project to a close for 2006. Early in 2007 I’ll publish the research report here as a free download. Many thanks to Mark and all my other interviewees for being so generous with their time and expertise.

Click the ‘AUDIO MP3′ icon below to hear the interview.

 Interview with Mark Earls: Download

This interview for my research into Perceptions of Coaching in the UK Creative Industries was with Matt Taylor, Director and Producer at Fat Beehive and Fat Beehive Films.

Fat Beehive is a small web developer based in the heart of London’s New Media cluster around Hoxton Square. Established in 1997, it has built up a strong reputation for creating accessible and engaging websites for charity, NGO, Faitrade and sustainability organisations. Its client list includes The Sustainable Development Commission, Crisis, GamCare, Global Witness, Compass Network, People Tree and Union Chapel.

Matt is one of the founding directors of Fat Beehive - there are now seven members of theteam including fellow director Tom Moreton. They have recently launched Fat Beehive Films, taking advantage of their film-making skills and the growth of the corporate film marketing, driven by the expanding broadband network. As well as the actual filming and editing, Fat Beehive Films offer video hosting and live webcasting services. You can see a selection of their films on their website.

I spoke to Matt in the relaxed surroundings of a cafe on Hoxton Square, where he described the importance of social skills and peer learning in a small new media agency. He also offered some amusing observations about the way management terms such as ‘coaching’ are regarded in the Fat Beehive office!

Click the ‘AUDIO MP3′ icon below to hear the interview.

 Interview with Matt Taylor: Download

I’ve just posted about the PC for Poets on Screen Two - my poetry blog. I’m mentioning it here as it’s too good to miss (the PC, not my poetry blog).

Apologies to anyone who, like me, spent the first 5 minutes of Imagine: The World Wide Web on Tuesday night watching something else on BBC2 instead of BBC1. When I realised my mistake and switched over I enjoyed the programme, although it didn’t come anywhere near the heights of The Ingenious Thomas Heatherwick. I think this was partly down to the familiarity of the subject matter - I already knew about most of the things it covered - blogging, YouTube, social media etc., whereas Heatherwick’s imagination was like something freshly landed from outer space. But if you haven’t spent much time on the internet recently it was probably a good general introduction to what’s going on the web at the moment.

The bit I found most interesting was the film director who does his casting by asking actors to submit videos of themselves reading his script. As he pointed out, this means the actors are more relaxed and often give a better performance. This also applies to the director himself, who can view the clips repeatedly, at leisure and make a more considered decision about who to invite to a face-to-face audition. He was impressed by the creativity of the actors, many of whom donned costumes and made mini movie-clips with their friends, instead of just reading the script to camera.

This seems to be part of a shift in hiring practices - instead of the old interview/audition/c.v./covering letter, applicants are using more initiative and creativity to demonstrate their skills. E.g. when Chemistry recently advertised some planning vacancies, they received “podcasts, business plans, dedicated websites, and brilliantly written emails” in response. (Found via Russell.) And in a lot of cases, it’s not an applicant-interviewer relationship at all, just people being engaged or deciding to collaborate on the basis of cool stuff they’ve created.

There are some excellent creative blogs out there - here are a few recent posts that have chimed in with my creative interests.

Whistle Through Your Comb

A new discovery this week, via Russell’s post of the month. Having blogged about creative environments, I thoroughly enjoyed The Perfect Office - which is emphatically not the kind of creative showroom where ‘the architecture is meant to communicate to the onlooker, “we’re highly creative.”‘:

I think an agency should not look at its office as a place: it should look at it as a tool. In other words, agencies should not create architecture that communicates creativity. They should create architecture that generates creativity.

Among the suggestions for a truly creative office are “No headphones… ever” - the author evidently agrees with the Creative Review blog that iPods Can Seriously Damage Your Creativity.

Noisy Decent Graphics

Great post on what it’s like to be a graphic designer - The Design Disease. Subjectivity rules on Wishful Thinking - I’m always fascinated to glimpse the world of someone who works in a different creative field, and this gives an good idea of what it’s like to be thrilled by arrows and tormented by shocking kerning. I draw the line at choosing a book by its cover though.

Cookin’ Relaxin’

Another new find, with an ingenious analysis of ways to consume Time based media such as music and radio programmes. With creative synaesthesia fresh in my mind, I’m intrigued by the visual representations of radio shows - and it’s worth reading to the end for the fractal bit.

Logic + Emotion

David Armano has put together a nice end-of-year e-book in the words of his readers:

2006: The year of…
PC (Power Consumer)
Connection
2.0
Business + Design
Video
Creativity
People

Download page: 2006 in your words

One of the most popular posts on Wishful Thinking is The Ingenious Thomas Heatherwick, prompted by Alan Yentob’s Imagine documentary about the multi-talented designer. There’s another Imagine on tonight, about the World Wide Web, featuring interviews with Tim Berners-Lee, various bloggers and contributors to Wikipedia and the Arctic Monkeys messageboard. If it’s half as good as the Heatherwick programme it’ll be well worth staying up for…

This interview for my research into Perceptions of Coaching in the UK Creative Industries was with Terry Childs, who has the dual roles of Managing Director and Creative Director at Silver Chair.

Founded in 1998 Silver Chair has developed into an agency with international experience in creativity and media, working on brands such as BMW, Barclays, Kellogg’s, Sears, BT, Norwich Union, HSBC and Land Rover. 2006 saw the agency expand with the launch of Silver Chair Digital.

Terry is the Managing Director and Creative Director at Silver Chair and has spent over 15 years in the marketing communications industry. During this time he has worked for both agencies and clients including Ogilvy & Mather, WWAV, Leo Burnett, BT, Norwich Union, Safeway, BMW and has recently developed campaigns for tic tac, Yamaha and the Department For Education and Skills.

Terry gave an entertaining account of the challenges involved in managing creative professionals. He also described Silver Chair’s internal mentoring programme, and highlighted the importance of using appropriate terminology when ’selling’ a development initiative to a creative team.

Click the ‘AUDIO MP3′ icon below to hear the interview.

 Interview with Terry Childs: Download

I’m feeling better than I really deserve to after spending yesterday afternoon on Hugh MacLeod and Robert Scoble’s pub crawl, followed by a party in the evening (not the Firefox one, I’m not a hardcore geek yet). As well as Hugh and Robert, who were both charming, I met a bunch of very interesting guys (no ladies) involved in all kinds of web-related projects.

If you read a lot of blogs Hugh and Robert will need no introduction - if not, Hugh draws the wickedly funny cartoons on GapingVoid which he simultaneously gives away for free and uses to sell Stormhoek wine, Savile Row suits and Thingamy software. Robert blogs at Scobleizer.com and quite literally wrote the book on blogging - Naked Conversations, which he co-authored with Shel Israel, essential reading for anyone considering writing a business blog.

The afternoon was kickstarted when Hugh received a call to say the Thresher viral campaign has resulted in 800,000 downloads of the 40% off coupons and wine is quite figuratively flying off the shelves. I woke up this morning to learn that the campaign (and Hugh’s cartoons) had been featured on the BBC News and national press. If you’re one of the few people in the UK who haven’t received a voucher, you can get one here and cross your fingers that Thresher have still got some wine left.

The Apple store was on the itinerary at the beginning but seemed to fall off it after a few pints. We did get a tour of Savile Row from Hugh, recorded in HD video by Robert - doubtless some of the footage will surface on the web soon. Apart from that the afternoon was spent diligently quaffing pints of Guinness and sharing ideas and enthusiasm.

People I met included Yakov Sadchikov, President of Quintura, who is developing a visual search engine using ‘clouds’ that work a bit like a mind-map; Jeffrey Walker of Atlassian Software Systems, Bob Pinkett of Peter Brett Associates, Martin Judd of Joined-up Solutions, Darren Straight who’s studying IT at the University of Kent, and Nigel Cooke who is photoblogging everything he eats and drinks and John Wilson who did a great job of shepherding us with a mulitcoloured umbrella.

Thanks to everyone for a great afternoon - if you were there and I didn’t get your URL, send it to me and I’ll add it to this post.

If you remember my post about Tim Wright’s amazing Playtime event in October, you will no doubt be concerned to hear that the Russians have joined the golfing space race.

Not to be outdone, Tim is stepping up his plans for his mission to play gold on the moon with David Bowie - he’s registered www.golfonthemoon.com and (ahem) ‘launched’ a competition to win an iPod Shuffle. The prize will go to “the best moon/golf/Bowie image submitted by Xmas”.

Tim has also posted links from some of the Playtime presentations - by Gavin Stewart, Tom Hume and Rob Bevan. See my previous Playtime post for more about the presentations.