Roblogfest is ON!

Well, at least some good things are not affected by the crisis. The nominations for best of the best in the Romanian blogosphere are happening (12 more days to go) and Roblogfest 2009 is officially on.
Cannot wait to see what happens this year, with last year showing some indication that decent writing and specialization were beginning to be appreciated.
With 600 nominations so far I am guessing something is wrong with the registration procedure or people are simply registering themselves which is kinda silly but last year all was well when winners were unveiled.
Also, can't seem to find them this year, but last year there were some neato widgets of you wanted to support the event. If anyone has one for 2009 pass it on :-)

Financial crisis and regular Romanians

One local TV station and one local research company have asked regular Romanians about the financial crisis. Result? After five months of everyone screaming their gutts out about the crisis, only 40% of Romanians are truly concerned and plan to reduce expenses. What is most striking is that only 7% are considering working more (!!!!!!).
I mean, really...I am speechless.

Good documentay

This is particularly poignant because a) the towers are not there anymore and b) at some point he refers to falling from the wire as "the most beautiful way to die" and that instantly brings to mind the image of the "falling man" from the 09/11 crashes. It's an interesting way to see meaning rewritten by actual events.

What is a good FB app

The latest thing is to invite clients to make Facebook apps. That despite the fact that FB is really not that big in Romania (I know it seems like it is, but currently HI5 still kicks FB ass with over 3 mil accounts) and that apps cannot be mass launched so they still rely on the age old concept of "okay, everyone in the agency send this to your friends list". The thing is that seldom we see a good app which you do not feel like trashing the minute you see it. So some basics of how good FB apps work:
- they are interesting enought to pass along to your list
- they renew temselves as they get passed on
- they carry a "status buzz" = meaning they are interesting to read as part of your account updates (you really really do not want to see "Bogdana was hit by a snowball from whoever")
- they carry with them the power to generate subsequent updates which are useful

As such, I think only the Bday calendar is a good FB app so far :-)

DADA experiment

I am developping an uncanny fascination for Facebook. Not because I like it but because I don't understand what it's exotic attraction is. So tonight I did an experiment based on my belief that creation on the web should be meaning-generating. I read though tens of pages of Facebook updates to see what I might get from that. These are some of the random thoughts I had:
- penguins are funny but currently people seem to get a baroque infatuation with vampyres and this may signal that we have reached the end of a cultural cycle (no, unless you took Medieval lit you will not know what this means)
- the weather is not a substitute for awkward moments, it's a justified topic
- people are lonely
- people who get interaction offline are really in no way excused from seeking interaction online
- a lot of what we do online is driven by the desire to be someone else
- love and sex are still the hottest topics
- pictures are not special even when photshopped
- the only useful app is the Bday calendar
- dogs are good, cats are lazy, birds are outdated and carry diseases
- Jay-z is a God
- there are more stories in the world than there is knowledge and maybe that is why we have more telenovellas than good documentaries
- eating is another big passtime (corollary: no wonder, this is a country where urban spaces are designed to prevent anything but parking)
- people like to be weird in order to attract attention
- social network updates turn everyone into a Paolo Cohelo lookalike - meaning we're all two bit philosophers

...

PLANNERS MEETING - attempted

We, meaning the board of APG Romania, are trying a sort of planners' meeting tomorrow at 19:00 in Amsterdam Grand Cafe. Currently we have only one confirmation and we are not sure there is a reservation but we'll try to be there and talk about planning and planners. If you wish to join, please do :-)

Yes we can reloaded

This cool guy pointed out this even cooler page where you can become part of the "Yes we can" video if you upload a pic of yourself.
:-)

Human nature is digital

I write extensively about "illegal downloads" "piracy" "DRM", stuff dealing with the new way of interpreting ownership brought on by the www. Today I read yet another post about a band deciding to place its music online for free to listen (and for 4 euros to download; and yes I know this band is largely unknown and this is good publicity in there but that is not the point). The point that came to mind was in connection with a sampling activity we are doing for a client. We give out small samples of their products and people love them and we run out before we can even have time to worry. And that reminded me of a Jeniffer Aniston movie where she would go to Macy's (BTW, huge layoffs there) and stock up on free samples of her favorite day cream.
My point is this: human nature accepts freely available stuff as normal, when not constantly and significantly prosecuted for doing so. We are preordained to naturally accept what is given to use for free. There is no moral imperative to do otherwise. There is only taught behavior which prevents us from not expecting everything to be freely available. That and the rule of law.
Now, with digital, things are as simple as they could be: everything is pretty much freely available and nobody is prosecuting to instill a different behavior (because the extreme scope and breadth of the digital world simply forbids it). Therefore, what some term piracy is just normal human nature doing what it feels is okay.
Of course, as in real life, I think that some control should be placed over this because, as mentioned before, human nature tends to think ALL things are free and this can lead to mayhem. But the thing is that law, as we have it now, is based on a quasi medieval understanding of ownership and needs to be reinterpreted to fit human nature and the way technology works.

CERF reloaded

Friday evening we got invited by Manafu to hear the people of CERF speak about what they were going to do to rescue the fair.
CERF is Romania's premier IT&C fair and it has been steadily losing relevance in an age where IT&C is gaining it. Congrats first and foremost to Manafu who is getting involved in all aspects of IT life in the country and adding value to anything technology related.
CERF, under the supervision of the new partners and following some research performed by Unlock, has decided to become more interactive and include some private meeting areas for B2B and some hand-on education with seminars and small events throughout the show for customers.
Probably the most controversial idea was to include an ECO section to the show which would focus on "environmentally-positive" technologies.
But first things first: I thought the core issue of CERF was that not a lot of people were coming by. This is, I expect, the only problem you can have as a fair because if you are not getting enough people in then you will not have revenue to put up the next one. So I question the doing of the research on companies who come to put up displays only. If the problem is that people are not coming to visit, we should be asking why that is. Two, everyone knows why people are not coming: because local tech industry has no experience in making a show of it, in putting up huge and interesting stands and transforming something exciting like games, new devices, new hardware into something that YOU CANNOT MISS. The fair is boring when, by definition, a fair is 80% about the entertainment value. As such the idea to have mini-events is not a bad one but it risks turning a FAIR into a conference which is not what a lot of people want to come see. Conferences are limited venues whereas fairs are big and inclusive.
One thought I instantly had was "why not teach people who come to display stuff how to make it grand and exciting, why not offer customizable stands, optional add-ons which would make the experience for the displayer and the visitor equally interesting?". The answer is simple, I know, investment is too big. Still I think that what the fair is missing is not more tables where people can sit at and talk, but more open areas where people can get excited till they shout :-)

Umm, Perwoll is weird?

I have made a habit of not really talking ill about any communication running in Romania for the simple reason that I sometimes do not know the brief, and also that sometimes you may run into the same people you were dissing.

But, I am confused by the constant strangeness of Perwoll commercials in Romania. Ever since they have started advertising, their TVC have been a source of bewilderment for me. Please consider:

1. Three young people in a park, two obviously a couple, one waiting for a girl who comes wearing the most sparkling, cocktail gown EVER and with a bottle of Perwoll in her bag. Underline: park, cocktail dress, fabric softener in bag.

2. Flamenco dancer, young, older woman in public talking to younger woman. The English version makes it clear older woman is younger man's mother. Romanian version, as I recall, does not. So you have a conversation between an older woman who washes a younger man's clothes.

3. The culmination: club, man with young woman dressed in pink sweater, they both ogle young woman dressed in pink tight dress, man ends up suggesting to tight dress woman to teach him how to wash while other young woman takes out a Perwoll bottle and then remains...well, ignored. So, club, two girls, same color clothes, one with Perwoll bottle in the bag.
....
I mean, is it me or are these simply NON SENSICAL? What is the relationship between the man in the club and the first woman? Is the older woman the young man's lover or mother? AND WHY ARE THEY ALL CARRYING FABRIC SOFTENER IN THEIR BAGS IN PARKS, CLUBS AND THEATRE HOUSES?
...
seriously...

Twitter conundrum

I am having a bit of a Twitter situation here. The story is this, I do not want to follow a lot of people on my Bogdana account simply because I use that for a bit of microblogging aside from the regular silliness. BUT I do want to know what the twitter Ro community is doing so I would like to follow a number of people and see what they talk about. I also do not want to start a second Twitter account where I only follow people (except at this point it seems like the only reasonable solution) because I already have enough places to log into. I cannot install a desktop client for Twitter because I alternately use two different computers so I would need something like an online version of TweetDeck ...
so what should I do?

Confirmation

A while back I was writing this about Rourke's newest. I watched it and it's exceptionally good (beats the crap out of Revolutionary Road or Vicky, Cristina whatever).
So, yes, do go watch The Wrestler.