Thought Den have been working hard over the last few months helping igfest get off the ground. We were bought in to help with business development and festival promotions which involved talking with international brands, national newspapers, local heros and the great and good of Bristol’s media scene. Sadly Howies fell at the final hurdle despite their enthusiasm to come on board, but thanks to some fantastic support from the Arts Council the festival is going to be a huge success. The TV crews have been mobilised and the reporters are on standby. And best of all it’s going to be sunny!!!

The festival eases into action this evening with a Moose Safari, and the headline game La Noche de Los Muertes kicks off on Friday. It is already massively over-subscribed and is shaping up to be a spectacular chase across the city.

My other two personal favourite games Rainbow Rain and Sneaks and Blaggers are also fully booked, which is a shame, but I’ll be doing my best to bagsy a spot.

And before signing off I’d like to draw attention to a special little sub-game that will be running throughout the festival. It’s a battle between Bristol’s media agencies to see who is – Bristol’s Biggest Player! The ideas is that agencies get points for playing igfest games and the more they play the more points they get. Given all the press the festival gets, it’s a nice way to shout about the great media talent we have in this city, and encourage the agencies to get out into the streets and play.

Is there no limit to what this boy will do to appear in print!? From the bleeding edge of technological advancement comes the story of one boy’s quest to…destroy a table. And for some reason a national newspaper, The Guardian no less, thought it worthy of page 3 in their staple lunch-break supplement G2.

The story focuses on the recent abuse the NHS has recevied from right-wing American policy wonks attempting to derail Obama’s health reforms. Mr Course chipped into the Twitter hashtag debate (#welovethenhs) with his own heart-warming story from the NHS operating theatre. With fond memories of  being lovingly nurtured back to good health in the bosom of our revered state-funded health system, he recounts in 140 characters the unfortunate lead-up to his injury. Needless to say he won’t be toe-punting any table legs in the near future. Or missing any more snowboarding trips, we hope…

Compare the meerkat, the silly meerkat advert released by comparethemarket.com are handling their social network page very well. They keep people on Facebook laughing and engaged!

The numbers are interesting however, they have, 509,840 fans (4th Aug 09) and on for the last 4 wall posts, they’ve received under 1% of rating engagement, eg, ‘I like this’. That’s quite small figure for a tool that’s easy to interact with.It’d be interesting to see what the click-through percentage is to their meerkat site. Maybe that’s the campaign’s goal?

But wait a second, slap my wrist. A repeating theme in our ‘Show me the money‘ chats (a 6 week forum held to discuss monitising pervasive media) was, ‘stats, figures and analytics can be a misleading evaluation when rating an emotional experience‘. So we should probably look past the numbers, and know that the little cute meerkats are probably having a very positive effect on all involved.

So is comparethemeerkat trying to drive conversions or are they creating an ‘apple-like fan base’ (cultofthemac.com) for consumers to fall in love with their brand.

Surely the second option is priceless

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKsSOEto3B0[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hfOt1qoALo[/youtube]

Have we just downloaded a piece of technology-history re-branded by Mozilla as ‘SeaMonkey‘?

This program promises to be the all-in-one, internet application suite. However quite is clearly Netscape Navigator re-released!

Oh wait, no wait. The intro blurb says, “SeaMonkey… Building on the great heritage of the Netscape Communicator”. So it is Netscape… again. [Pause]

Oh…

[Edges gently back to the door hoping he can escape then un-install].

It’s been 3 weeks, but we’re back in two pieces!

Ben’s been off enjoying the hospitality, exploring the French mountainside and setting up massive stages for festivals. So only expect ‘Bonjour mon-amis’ and some amazing cooking…

… and with Dan. Just buzz him to break the jet-lag dreaming like a cruel alarm clock… zzzz… San Fran …. zzzzzz

Please pop-in for a coffee, because the Thought Den office is now officially back open!