Interested in movies? Try MyCreativeCommunity.com

On the Creative Screenwriting podcast I heard about MyCreativeCommunity.com, billed as "MySpace for movie people".

I don't know anyone on there, so if you know me (or would like to), check out my page, leave me a message and I'll send you an invite!

I live and work in the fifth best city in the world!

News story

Chaos 2.0

Advertising Age - Bob Garfield's Chaos Scenario 2.0

I enjoy listening to Bob Garfield. He can predict the apocalypse and sound reasonable and calm, all at the same time.

Some very, very good stuff in this article. Now if the ad world was like the blogosphere, we could know what the agency types are thinking about all this.

Dogs and sheep

On a spiritual note...

While walking this morning I saw a dog running across a field towards a man who was walking. Must be his owner? No. The dog stopped, looked a little confused, then started running towards me!

It didn't take the dog long to realise I wasn't the one he was looking for, either. I held out my hand so he could sniff it, but he gave me that funny look dogs do when you're not the right person - you know, head slightly cocked, ears perked so as to suggest a frown.

He was a good boy (I guess it was a boy?) - he kept a safe distance from me, and then stood around looking for where on earth his person was. He was going to wait.

If I were that dog, would I wait for my master? Or would I go along with whoever held their hand out to me?

Jesus talked about sheep, and hearing voices. Specifically, hearing his voice. That's a skill I'm working on today.

Bad, naughty TV3

Naughty TV3.

It started a while back, when I wanted to enter a competition for Campbell Live. To enter, just register on the site - it's easy and you can unregister whenever you want. Ok.

Months later, they decide to send me - without me asking - news headlines by email. I get enough email and I don't want any more. I already get TV3's headlines via RSS and that's the way I like it.

Thankfully, there is info on how to unsubscribe at the bottom. But I - and many other users - don't want info, we want a link that... just... unsubscribes... us!

As it is, I had to retrieve my long-ago forgotten password, then login and check the "don't send me stuff" box.

It doesn't sound like much but boy, adding that kind of incremental workload and information load is not a way to win friends and influence people. It's a way of spreading ill will about your brand.

TV3, are you listening?

Thanks for the plug, John Bishop

Speaker, trainer and consultant John Bishop has given this blog a very nice plug in his newsletter, Communications Line.

The future is a foreign country

They are doing things differently there, to misquote and paraphrase author L.P. Hartley ('The Go-Between', 1953). Nowhere is this more apparent than in new media, or social media and the confusing tangle of acronym-ed technologies called the internet. I am not deterred, frightened or daunted by this new world, but I don't claim to have a grip on all of it either. That's why we need ambassadors and interpreters, emissaries who bravely go into the ether and come back with baubles and tales of the new sights, sounds and experiences. Much like Marco Polo and other explorers who went from Europe to Asia and came back with spices and other goods to enliven medieval life.

One such ambassador is Simon Young, who started as a writer on marketing and communications (he appears regularly in Marketing magazine). He presented at the Strategic Communications and PR Forum in Auckland on Tuesday and blew his (quite small) audience away with his depth of understanding about the wired world. He talked about his media consumption - where he got news and information and how he entertained himself. Not much of it was about conventional media. Fine, I said, great lifestyle, wonderful experiences, where's the cash flow? I'm an ambassador, Young replied. I get paid to explain it to people like you. You can see more of him at http://www.simonyoungwriters.com/ and http://www.madyoungthing.blogspot.com/

John's a fount of knowledge, and I'm not just saying that because he gave me a plug! :) Check out the rest of his newsletter for more tips on the future, plus listening tea, Gore-y science, Rock'n'roll, governance 'by design' and permission to enjoy cheap wine.

I'll post here when I've uploaded my presentation notes to the SimonYoungWriters website.

Other presentation notes (including John's) are at Conferenz' website.

Update: my presentation notes, brief as they are, are here.

Gerontius is famous!

My Second Life avatar Gerontius Wunderlich has been snapped on BlogMinistry .

The occasion, a fantastic conversation between me, Dan (the blogger in question) and the Dalek about God, church and the way churches reach people.

It's a matter not just of interest to religious people. Mission organisations are discovering their role is sparking conversations, rather than simply preaching. In fact, missionaries have known this better than "local churches" for years.

As society fragments and gets more niche-ified, marketers need to treat their customers with curiosity and respect, the same way that the best missionaries have for years. Maybe marketers should consider missionary positions? ;)