By Elfe Cimicata (52 NYC)
New York City. The fresh smell of the subway on a hot day, the access to bland bodega coffee and New Jersey just a short hour away. Why did I move from Portland again? Although I miss the smell of fresh air, access to the best coffee culture nationally and snowboarding just a short hour away, the large overwhelming Italian family called (or pressured depending on how you look at it). What better way to reconcile my love of Portland then to open a branch of 52 Limited here in Manhattan? So here we are in a city that never sleeps, as experienced for the first time last Saturday with my friend Gina. I’m no spring chicken anymore. Regardless, I am very excited to be part of the 52 team once again and to be working with a close friend and now colleague, Ami Werner.
We have hit the ground running developing relationships with high-level talent, as well as clients, and are overwhelmed by the amount of events the city provides. Last week, among numerous other events for Creative Week, Brooks and I spent 2 days at the Creative Unconference sponsored by the One Club and Google. The format is simple: the participants create the agenda and ask for others in the conference to engage in their topic of discussion. You write down a topic old-school style on a piece of construction paper with a large (scented!) marker, pose these to the group, break and then venture to the group topic where you would like to contribute your time and energy. You can even switch between presentation discussions. Luckily, Brooks and I could tag team.
Highlights were the topics “The New Creative Agency” held by Matt Groves of Goody, Silverstein and Partners and “Building Creative Teams” led by Nick Law from R/GA. The overarching theme is that agencies are going to need to be flexible. The days of only needing Art Director and Copywriting teams are almost extinct. They are inundated with new systems, technological advances, blogs, twitter, facebook, engagement applications, iPhone applications, API; it seems it’s become more about the art of making things and the influx of information where once it was solely about the art of storytelling. The struggle for most agencies is keeping track of all of these advances while still trying to maintain the heart of what they do best. How do they communicate this within a new structure that changes so dramatically and consistently? Enter the creative technologist.
A self-proclaimed “geek” caught my attention immediately. Love those geeks. Richard Schatzberger of BBH is a Creative Technologist. He promotes the latest and greatest in technology while fluidly being able to take this digital lexicon and explain it in a way that clients and creatives can understand. Simply put, he doesn’t speak in code. What are the other overriding qualities besides being a tech geek? You need to be adaptable so you can move from team to team; the ideas created for the strategic group are going to vary greatly from the development team. You need to be good at making ideas better and more engaging: create a prototype so the team can hold it in their hands and play with it, look at the project through a new lens, create a different viewpoint, make the idea more viable. You need to be knowledgeable in tech trending. You need to get out into the real world and see how people are engaging with it. You need to be able to talk about hard-core technology, new platforms and API, make it sound fun and then be able to produce it. You need to be able to make RFID sound more interesting then Ashton Kutcher updating his Facebook status. For me, it’s easy. I own the entire Battlestar Galactica series. But, for storytellers, this will take an alchemist according to Richard. And that’s the real role of the creative technologist.
With all this insight and confluence of ideas, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Are we getting more or less connected? I sat drinking coffee yesterday at my local coffee shop in Prospect Heights trying to wake up (remember Gina and I were out until 6am?). With the little Italian I know, I recognize a young girl squabbling with her aunt about doing what she wants to do full-time without the support of her famiglia. I heard “disegno grafico” and we started chatting; she was a young graphic designer looking for work. I checked out her portfolio and gave her some advice on her resume. She’s going to teach me how to cook gnocchi. We did add each other to our facebook pages and I told her to follow 52 Limited on Twitter to hear about our latest and greatest events. Still, I’m consistently reminded that among all of these advances and distractions, the best form of connection is still meeting people face to face.
For more information on the Creative Unconference, go to http://www.creativeunconference.com/home/.