A question we asked ourselves last month as we wrapped up Parashoot. At first it seemed it definitely couldn’t be when the internet at your office fails and you have to establish a makeshift testing office in your front room. But what business hasn’t at some point eked out its existence, whether through infancy or old age, in the homely surrounds of an attic, spare room, garage or garden shed? Behold the rigour and beauty of our testing process, from iPhone to Dell netbook and Mac Book Pro.
On the plus side, having our server rack replaced by a fully functioning Ignis oven meant brownies were forthcoming, and thus IE6 was conquered. From here on in, IE6 will not be supported, in much the same way these admirable countries have stated their case against.
Things seem to take longer these frosty-morning-creaky-limbed days. Apologies for the delay in posting, but finally we have some lovely videos to shout about.
The first is very exciting – we were commissioned by the BBC to run a workshop at the Pervasive Media Studio back in October. The brief was to give the hottest new BBC design recruits a taste of pervasive thinking. What better company to run the event than the den thinkers. It was a fun day with talks from the likes of Tom Melamed of Calvium, Luke Jerram and a stand-up brainstorm session on the PM’s monstrous and curving white board. Nick Johnston (Hatboy to most and many) kindly videoed and edited the highlights, so please plug in for 3 minutes of Thought Den magic…And Dan’s hair looks much better this time, eh!?
Another somewhat delayed announcement follows – the igfest 09 highlights reel is in! Geoff Taylor has been hard at it in the edit suite, Simon Johson has been on the phone to his copyright lawyers and I’ve been keeping interested parties happy with taster emails packed with images. But the wait is over, moving picture technology has triumped, gorge at will. What an awesome event it is. Roll on 2010.
Step forward Mr Rhys Thomas, new Thought Den employee and pumpkin-carving PHP extraordinaire. He’s currently working a 3 month trial (baptism of fire?) with us down at the Paintworks. In only two weeks he’s already played for our adopted football team – Team Rubber – been out on the piss with Mobile Pie, worked late, gone home early, cycled Dan’s bike to Sainsbury’s and visited the Pervasive Media Studio at midnight.
Rhys Thomas - Thought denner
His first project build was Subtlemob – take a look, it’s all going down this week.
Now he’s working on amends to Parashoot, the film industry’s Base Camp – we’re about to make it even more kick-ass with a nifty mobile phone feature.
An exciting moment for me… my first blog post for Thought Den, infact first blog post that’s not on my own blog!…
So far I have been designing logos, web layouts and an iphone game, so lots of fun and varied projects for me to get my teeth stuck in to! See the subtlemob site – our latest creation, where I designed the layout with Ben’s guidance! Check the event out while you’re there.. it looks awesome!
I sit here in my room – (a place I am very proud of, my own little Thought Den.. ambient bubble of music and lighting, beneath drapes and walls carefully plastered with creative inspiration) – I think of how to sum up the past few weeks freelancing for Thought Den. My first paid job actually doing what I love to do… and what an amazing thing it is to do what you love every day and be guided by professionals who can teach you more at such a fast rate!! The highlights so far probably being white boards, creative brainstorming, jokes, drinks, paper throwing when ‘in the zone’, learning fast, and being a part of the thinking den!
Almost 100 pics here of the festival we can’t stop talking about. We’ll be quiet now. But not before congratulating Team Rubber on their Bristol’s Biggest Player win!
You may soon tire of igfest self-congratulation but we’re still buzzing from it. And here for your image-based viewing pleasure (though word on the grape-vine is that someone has uploaded a **VHS** recorded version to Vimeo) we enclose some funny little stills of our moment with BBC Points West on Friday, just before the headline game La Noche De Los Muertes kicked off.
A big and very important publication shall soon be released, celebrating the success of the Media Sandbox scheme that proved so instrumental in helping launch our business. The Happy Packages project in collaboration with Mobile Pie, currently in suspended animation / on hiatus, has opened many doors for us but more than anything has kept the dream alive that one day we’ll get rich with our own IP. If all else fails, the pictures below suggest we might have back-up careers as a boy band, don’t they?
And now for a brief news update. First off, Ben has been working so hard since his return from France that his MacBook Pro battery exploded. No joke, pictures enclosed. Our Mac technician emailed with his diagnosis – “your battery is swolen and bloated and is a danger to the health of you and your machine”. Enough said, new one on order.
Footy Fantastic
In other news, Team Rubber played some fantastic football at the 2009 Bristol Media Footy Tournament. As nominated scurrier, charger, harrier and ball of fury, Ben was honoured to feature in the new black and gold strip complete with Rubber crest. The group games started slow with a draw, but changed up a few gears with some resounding wins, not least a 6-0 demolition with two-goals-Templeton netting…twice. A tough quarter final went to penalties, but our athletic keeper kept us in the action. With only 5 minutes to rest, and playing in sahara-like conditions, we were running on empty. And with only 5 minutes played we lost Ives at 1-0 up in the semi, ending in a draw for yet more penalties. For some reason Ben took the first penalty…keeper dived right, Ben skies it over the bar. But after more heroics from Bunny-Button, our star keeper, we went to sudden death. And lost. To the eventual tournament winners Smith and Williamson. Well done. Go shuffle some more legal papers.
GI JOE is go
After a manic and stressful build our star flash developer Tommy Arnott pulled out the stops and delivered a stonking multi-language GI JOE quiz, with the help of excellent copy writing and project management over at Rubber Towers. Enjoy the game below and check out the other part of the GI JOE campaign, some outstanding 3D work from Mr Webster (of our Virtual Tour fame) who helped ‘unearth’ some ‘leaked footage’ from the GI JOE recruits’ archive…
Thought Den have just returned from a whirlwind trip to the big smoke to check out the fresh new talent blossoming onto the creative scene. Free Range at The Old Truman Brewery on Brick Lane has been running for a while, and as an ex-Bournemouth student I exhibited there myself; it proved to be a great start to the career, and I also got to collect millions of cool postcards from all the illustrators at Central St Martins, Camberwell, UCA etc.
The beer and busines cards flowed but we had to make our drunken exit for an early train. There’s some really great work there and it’s open for the coming weekend so head down if you’ve got time. It’s also right by Spitalfields, where Dan and I snuck in some cheeky Capoeira…
Thought Den have recently finished hosting a programme of workshops at the Pervasive Media Studio. With the help of Jon Dovey, UWE academic and one of the studio founders, we encouraged residents and invitees to discuss the commercial prospects for pervasive media, looking at the markets we currently exploit and areas we’d like to move into. The sessions also tied in very nicely with the studio’s latest bid for funding from the Technology and Strategy Board so fingers crossed – sustainability is the word! Download the document if you’re interested in reading what came out of the sessions…
A common problem facing many of the studio residents is how to pitch their wares to commioners who might not be as technically au fait with the sort of work coming out of the studio. The ethos in the studio is to collaborate, explore and innovate and at times we risk isolating ourselves clients who are looking for more mainstream solutions. The T-Mobile campaign is a great example – swathes of the creative community sneered at the Liverpool St Station dance-off because Flash-mobs were so 5 years ago , but the general public absolutely loved it! And T-Mobile’s Trafalgar Sqr singalong sequel is again doing well on You Tube. So we looked at ways to take a step back from the cutting edge to make our work more accessible, along with what metrics might be relevant to demonstrate the success of our work. For residents like Simon Games and AntiVJ it can be a real challenge representing the success of a project because more often than not they’re dealing with a more profound emotional engagement than a simple page impression. These issues are far from solved but the debate is beginning…
