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June 21, 2010#

Recently at Own Brand – June 21st, 2010

Nothing particularly strange or startling in the last week. The majority of my time was spent drafting sponsorship proposals for our super-secret-but-not-really tech conference planned for mid-September. On the back of that were a handful of meetings along those lines.

Locally, last week saw our home town in the international spotlight, following the release of the Saville Report and on the national stage as part of the UK City of Culture 2013 bid. I’ve been helping to get a hyperlocal opinion site, Listenderry.org, off the ground so we attempted to provide a little coverage of both events there.

We were lucky enough to be involved at the fringes of the City of Culture bid and so got a nice little invite to a private screening of the bid DVD, a snippet of which is above. Top class work by some impressive local talent.

This coming week brings a little more of the same – more sponsorship proposals, more meetings – alongside a focused effort to get our first few Iddictive guides a step or two nearer completion.

June 14, 2010#

Recently at Own Brand – June 14th, 2010

The focus for last week was to get caught up on some writing work and organise a Digital Derry exhibition for the local Foyle Days festival. As they say, 1 outta 2 ain’t bad.

Foyle Days went really well and you can see some photos from the event here. The premise was to showcase some of the local digital media talent to an audience of families and young children.

We were able to wrangle some great showreels from the local university, technical college and a topnotch local TV production company. We also brought a photographer and two very talented digital artists (pictured) to work live on the day – showing their works-in-progress live on the big screen. A little damp on Sunday, but otherwise a great success and good fun to boot.

Outside of my regular columns for the Derry Journal and Belfast Telegraph, writing took an unfortunate back seat – something that needs rectified this week. I’ll also be following up on some interesting meetings about rolling out a series of Idea Hacking events and a technology conference we have planned for the autumn – sponsorship proposals all ’round then.

June 7, 2010#

Recently at Own Brand – June 7th, 2010

I like the idea of weeknotes – weekly updates about what a business has been up to and is working on – as both a way of reflecting and as a way of keeping anyone with a passing interest up-to-date.

So I’m going to give it a go here, ideally on Monday of each week. So, what is Own Brand up to?

Last week was mostly about the first Idea Hacking event which took place on Thursday evening. After a month of hustling around trying to put it together, we welcomed 7 speakers, 2 open mic guests and over 70 attendees. Overall it seemed to be a great success (you can see some of the feedback here), although there are certainly some things I’d change.

First and foremost, the layout of the room wasn’t as conducive to chit chat as it could have been – as most people took up their seats almost immediately. A ‘mulling about’ area will be a fixture of future events. Similarly, for future Idea Hacks we’ll probably go with fewer speakers and more Q&A.

That said, it hit the nail on the head in terms of diversity and the concept (diverse perspectives on one theme) works well. The aim now is to speak to potential sponsors about helping roll out the idea across NI, Ireland and then the UK – and given that theme, location and venue can be adapted to just about anything, I’d hope to see some interesting variations.

This week the focus shifts to a little catching up – writing in particular – and this weekend’s Foyle Days festival in Derry. The City Council have asked me to put together a ‘digital city’ exhibition – a showcase of all things digital media in the city. Short notice but it should be fun.

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