This week, we had a lecture from Maria Browne, which had everthing to do with interview techniques. Obviously, this was to prepare us for the upcoming mock interviews later on. This lecture was a bit different in that instead of the usual Monday morning slot, it got rescheduled for and evening slot in the middle of the week. Some people were happy, some people weren’t and I failed to really notice the difference, it occured, didn’t it? Good. =)

She didn’t really say what I hadn’t heard before, having done LCVP at school and then during the first semester of this year at Personal Development. I mean CVs, manners, dress code, research, body language, stress management and various other forms of preparation that overlap what I said already. Nothing too new, although to give credit where it’s due, it was a good reminder in how to go about things in an interview, and not to forget to critique the  interviewer to better yourself and your interview skills.

The interviews themselves went on quite smoothly. From an array of different job positions, I chose to go with that of a Sound Engineer. The choice was quite simple, in that I’d assume that a person interviewing for a job will know a good bit of something about it, so in the mock interview, the interviewer would pretend to as well. This would open the possibility of me simply laying down a few semi-technical sound production terms and methods in an effort to make the interviewer believe I’m some sort of a sound-editing whiz. I assumed wrong in that it was mostly just the standard questions about teamwork, personal qualities, reasons for choosing the company and so on. Nothing really special. In the end, I think I did reasonably well in that I am not good at simulating excitement and interest on command, when presented with textbook topics. Smalltalk isn’t one of my top interests.

That’s it for now, peace.

We had a great little lecture this week, carried out by Fiona Harte from the company Palm specialising in varous handheld devices such as mobiles and smartphones.

Fiona has spent the last 15 years in marketing for the company, and has extensive experience in the field. She gave a rundown of how marketing is often carried out and how the decisions of whether something is- or is not going to sell, or even be noticed by the public. She gave us a few brilliant examples in attracting loyal customers, and extablishing brand loyalty. Fiona herself is focused mainly on E-Commerce.

While I can’t call Palm a multinational conglomerate, they do operate in 16 different countries- which is good. The bad part is that with such a wide coverage, there often are attempts to defraud the company. Fiona has talked about the various means of combating this issue, from simple measures such as investigating whether or not a purchase order is authentic, to utilising various laws and acts, such as Data protection, Brand and Trademark Protection, Copyright and Can-spam Act(USA Only).

Fiona also deals with the task of attracting traffic for the company. The four major ways are through:

• Search Engines
• Pre-Existing (People already aware of the brand themselves)
• Word of Mouth
• Web Advertisements

Fiona’s efforts to advertise and push the brand may seem like a, compared to others, rather easy job, however, she has a quota to reach. If the sales are low or if a product is discontinued, offers and clearance deals have to be established to help and generate at least some profit.

Also another form of advertising is in Social media such as facebook, although there is alot of mixed opinions because facebook is like a persons personal page so alot of people dont like to see adverts. Some companys like the idea of using facebook because fans will get alerted of a new status immediatly.

Personally, Fiona was a very kind and charismatic person, and her lecture really showed that. However, the sheer thought of the business end of things drives me away from, well, the business end of things. I don’t think I ever will be involved with the back-end of marketing, at least I hope so, as the idea of having an office job is a tad stagnant for my tastes at the moment. Never had and interest in such an endeavour, and the couple of years I studied business for my junior cert definitely proved that I had absolutely no interest in it.

This being the end of semester, I don’t think I will be posting until the next one, so until the next time, peace out.

This weeks guest speaker was Fiona Kelly. The address to her company’s website is www.glimmer.ie

Fiona opened with a quote that went like this:

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it.”
Jim Jarmusch

It’s a handy quote, but I can’t help but feel it’s trying a bit too hard to be clever. It could be summed up with “Incorporate inspiring elements into your own works in a way unique to you.” There, done.

I don’t dislike it, but it does seem a bit lifeless. . . Perhaps it’s because it seems to project its sophistication a tad too much, but it’s just me. Put short, while it does not promote outright thievery, it puts forward the concept of ‘intelligent borrowing’. An idea can be ‘borrowed’ (likely to have been already borrowed multiple times over by a number of like minded individuals, somewhere along the line) and then assimilated with your own ideas to create something of your own, that will be accounted as your own by others, even if composed of ideas or methods originating elsewhere.

Fiona also introduced us to a website called: Smashing Magazine- a great source of inspiration-slash-enlightenment online. iStockphoto is another example presented to us. It’s another one of those stock-marketplaces (not stocks in the banking sense of course, stock materials, i meant) that are floating around. An easy source of a few quid, that is, provided your produce is good enough to be bought in the first place.

We also had a peek at some of Fiona’s Banner ads. My impression was that they were just your regular ads you see on everyday websites, in that they weren’t bad. On thing that jumped out at me is that whoever is on the paying end of the deal, might not always have the most vivid and wild of imagination, inherently limiting the creative nature of the end result.

Not a bad lecture, but not too many highlights in it for me, sadly.

Tokidoki is a clothing brand/lifestyle brand/whatever the term would be, featuring japanese Cibi inspired characters on their products. Personally, I don’t like that particular style of illustration, I completely fail to see the appeal of it.

Simone, the man behind the operation,  started off creating his characters by using Adobe Illustrator but later learned how to draw them in flash for the purposes of animation.He later started his own website as a portfolio, but it escalated from there and became a brand. The website was originally a porfolio to showcase his work but it later transformed into a Brand.  Due to the unique nature of his work, he got a lot of freelance work. One thing he said that left a mark is:” Do not be afraid to be insecure and want yourself to get better and to always be humble because there is always someone better out there.”

This weeks guest speaker was Emma Wade, a visual artist primarily based in Dublin. After Emma graduated from the Institute of Art and Design in Dun Laoghaire, she worked at a design company for two years, after which she moved to live Dublin. In 2005, she visited the Irish Museum of Modern Art and decided to pursue what she is doing right now, being a visual artist. On a personal note, I can definitely see where she is coming from and am able to relate to it, but I don’t exactly share the same sentiments after having visited IMMA myself, but that’s just me. Everyone’s different =)

Her website: http://www.emmawade.com/ Go have a peek.

Emma was kind to share her previous projects with us, some of which I though were quite interesting and unique in various respects.

Emma was a tad quiet and reserved, but I can completely understand her: she is giving a talk to a mostly apathetic crowd  during what some of the students dare to call “early” hours- primary reason for apathy, about something she loves doing and is personal to her. I know where she’s coming from, I quite dislike giving speeches, and the 2 cameras at the opposite ends of the room didn’t help either.

She introduced us to a project of her’s called H.U.G.S.  H.U.G.S. stands for Human Utopian Generating System. The contraption is basically a jacket, without sleeves, that constricts tight enough to  simulate the  feeling of being hugged. A pretty neat idea, I think. One of those little things that are meant to liven a person’s day up.I wouldn’t mind giving it a go, and seeing what happens. I can say that it’s only the next-best-thing to the real thing, but what can I say, the idea is brilliant. However, I wouldn’t recommend it with anyone suffering from claustrophobia, and I for some reason, I can imagine something similar being incorporated into one of the endless stream of Saw movies Hollywood has been s****ing out. Either way, it gets my stamp of approval, even though it doesn’t really stand for anything, but hey.

The next piece she showed us was a view of the world from the perspective of a dog, entitled ‘Rexotrek’.

Quotation time:

‘Rexotrek aims to encourage the user to see the world from a dog’s perspective. The project is informed by an interest in the relationship between dog and man and how we still do not know a great deal about how dogs perceive the world, even though our lives have been intertwined for centuries. In some scientific fields it remains somewhat taboo to state that animals can experience emotion. In contrast to this, pet owners tend to insist on the fact that their dog, cat or gerbil has the capacity to feel happy, sad or lonely. With the material the artist collected dealing with her own dog Rex, she proposes a subjective expression through the medium of installation, video and audio.

Devices such as GPS, mini CCTV camera, mini-disk recorder with a VOiP headset were used to attempt to record the happiness of the dog. While exploring the notion of dog as artist’.

It can be a little funny if glanced at from a distance, but in the end, I think it’s a brilliant idea, and it gets better and better the longer you think about it.

http://www.rexotrek.com/

Another one, was a little idea of a pressure pad, that emits a cheering sound when stepped on. She shared the inspiration for the project with us, and I do have to say that some of the really good things come completely by accident. It turns out that by living nearby a stadium, she woke up one day, and by coincidence, the crowd happened to cheer. She then though to herself: “Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up to that every morning?”. Whilst she didn’t even aspire to implement this in every bedroom of every house around the world, she concocted a little mat which happened to be  connected to a pair of speakers, and that did the trick. I think it worked quite well, too.

That’s it for this week, have a nice one.

The lecture was a realyl engaging one. I think that this has to do with the fact that we are all studying what directly relates to Ian’s work, or would that be the other way arouind, Ian does what we can relate to, as we are studying a course  relative to his work. Whichever way ’round it is, the lecture was a success.

In the lecture, he explained the process of working on projects, and the ‘hierarchial’ layout/chain/system of command in a company such as the RTE. You know, the bigger ones that don’t take prisoners as far as their employees goes. You know, “do as you’re told, there will always be someone to fill your space if you don’t”, ones. Ian put a strong emphasis to NOT be disillusioned by being rejected for a spot when you’re qualified and willing to do the job in the Digital Media industry- one of the biggest downfalls of being a freelancer.

Ian gave us an excellent little look into some of the projects he’s worked on, and the quality of them all was really, really good. I wouldn’t expect anything less, because well, I don’t think that we’d have a mediocre guest speaker give us a talk here at ITB, but the quality was quite striking, and in a good way. Although I can’t help but feel a very slight tint of sterility, but that’s because of the following-orders-from-RTE part.

The project with most emphasis on it, was called ‘We Own the Streets” and to be honest, it’s quite a neat little creative endeavour. It can be viewed as a mocumentary (whenever the word “Mocumentary is mentioned, I instantly think of “We are Spinal Tap”) of this bloke that fancies a little bit of Free-Running, and doesn’t know what he really wants to pursue in life.

A facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/WeOwnTheStreets

I apologise that it’s facebook, but seems everyone and everything has it’s own page up there. Myself, I wouldn’t notice it if the damn thing went down this instant (though I probabbly would have a bit of a laugh when it would be shown on the news, presented by a reporter who is unable to find anything better to report).

Was the kecture good? Hell yes it was. Would be pretty cool to have Ian do one next year.

Edward is a project manager at ICAN (http://www.ican.ie/flash/)

He began by telling us how he initially got into the digital media sector.
He told us of when he himself was in college, and spoke about the deadlines he had to meet. This was a very good learning process for him, and in the end he received a lot of experience which helps him tremendously in his current position as a project manager. It is Edward’s job to make sure the staff meet all the set deadlines and upto a good standard.

ICAN is a company that specialises in advertising  and communications. They help their clients pick the right course of action as far as making the right decisions online goes. ICAN provides these following services:

• Online Strategy
• Web Design
• Advertising Campaigns
• Search Marketing
• Online PR
• Search Engine Optimisation
• Project & Campaign Management
• Multimedia Design

Whilst providing all of these, ICAN’s  concern alpha is Advertising.

The employees at ICAN include:

1 Managing Director
7 Creative
7 Production
5 Client Services
3 Media
2 Search Marketing
1 Accounting

A notable mention is the WRC logo that they designed. As a fan, it came as quite a surprise to me. Respect.

Overall, the video was quite informative, though it could’ve done without the one-liners Mr. Melvin would crack every once in a while. To conclude, ICAN isn’t a big company to any extent, with less than 30 people onboard, however, they have made some high profile work such as logos for the WRC and Eircom, so no one can say they haven’t been working.

Aural learners.

Visual learners

Kinaesthetic learners.

These categories are said to apply to any given person, and we did a test to, well, test this. I can see the purpose and the mentality behind it all, however, I do have to dissagree with such a clear-cut, black-and-white categorisation. Knowing myself for the past 2 decades (2 years short of that, I know :sigh:), I can say that I am able to employ all three to near-equal levels. To me, it would just depend on the task at hand, and it has in the past as I know from experience. Just thought I’d dispute this statement as I don’t view it as “true”.

We’ve learnt that some bloke in a shed,  in the UK, recently published findings which comprise of 60 different ways of comparison of people’s methods to learn. Convoluted sentence, I know, but I really wanted to keep the “shed” part in there, and it can be tough to word it right.

So, how do all these compare, well auditory learners learn best through listening, visual ones through looking at things (an old Lee Evans gag of a bloke just staring (and only staring) at an engine, hoping that a problem would jump out at his face,comes to mind), and kinaesthetic learners through tactile means.

A few tips also came up, these were:

Working in short bursts

Frequent breaks

Changing location

Not too certain on the last one, as I rarely ever feel like hauling my computer over to another room or perhaps outside, or hopping tables in a lecture room. As much fun as the latter would be, sometimes I’m simply too asleep or too curteous to use people’s notepads, pencil boxes and beverage bottles as walking space. Also, while there aren’t many of us, there usually aren’t too many empty spaces around, which would be distracting to the new neighbours if you suddenly moved seat. However, sprinting over from the opposite end of the room to the seat beside them, and whispering “I was feeling lonely” to their ear, just to see their reaction, would definitely be priceless for the next 10 minutes at least, so perhaps it’s worth it after all.

This is getting rambly, so I’ll kill this one off here. A great lecture, and a good few topics can come from it. Let’s see what the next week will bring.

Bugger me.

I’ve never imagined how ridiculously tedious this can be. Well for a first attempt, I think I did alright.

In the lecture, we covered typeface. What makes it up, evolution of it, different types, and what makes it effective.