2008 in review
Despite economic crisis and some personal dark notes 2008 has been an awesome year. Putting it in perspective is a hard task; too much happened.
Beijing 2008.
Until September everything in my life had olympic rings attached. Unlike some other projects, we had a due date written in stone: 08-08-08. Everything needed to be oiled and working by then. It was one-in-a-lifetime oportunity.
"Voices of the Olympic Games" was a fun and demanding projects I was ever involved with. I have written several posts about it all over the months. Here's a link to the tag "Olympics" in this same blog in case you want to read them all.
On the "lowlights" side of things: during the games my father got seriously sick and passed away the last thursday of Beijing 2008. Talk about messy weeks.
Public Speaking.
I am really fortunate. Some people think I'm worth listening to, and I was invited to speak at We Media Buenos Aires, WordCamp Buenos Aires and DigitalTalk. Hopefully I'm getting better at this thing of trying to share ideas, visions and experiences with others.
Oddly enough I think I get more out than I give back to this events.
Huge thank you to the people who invited me.
Lenovo.
It has been a crazy year at lenovo. Olympics, new product launches (such as the X300, the IdeaPads, NetBooks, servers... ) and a global crises.
I got a little bit more settled in my role within the company. I must admit I don't quite like "settled" and I will be looking at new ways to make me uncomfortable and drive myself mad soon.
Personal.
Despite the noted lowlight, it has been a nice year personally. The most important news is that I'm bound to become a parent in March.
There's still a lot that needs to be worked out. I really don't like living in Buenos Aires, particularly I'm not fond to raise a kid here (since I was able to grow up in the mountains and forests of Patagonia) and my apartment has started a self-destroy sequence some months ago.
Yet the good news is so overwhelming that all the problems and issues become secondary.
Also, in the "growing family" department I got to meet a "new" Brother. Life has some very strange twists.
Posting.
I haven't been posting too often to this blog. Yet I think there are a couple of entries readers might find interesting:
- This series of posts on mixing metrics, social media and maths.
- A post in April doing some futurology thinking if Social Media Marketing could survive a crisis. (Also available in Spanish at Mariano´s Blog)
- Then I put Social media in perspective Stating that it is not the center of the universe.
- Two pieces from this same month: on Influencers and on Shopping Processes.
Note: it is an interesting exercise to read thoroughly a year worth of posts to see how much rubbish I usually write and how little substance.
For 2009.
High expectations and profound changes. They will either happen or I'll force them to happen. Although responsibilities should increase with parenting the adventure and nomadic spirit within me is about to burst.
End of madness recap
Warning! Massive post.
As the events that happened between August 8 and August 24 start to slip to memory-land I thought it would be nice to do a recap of what we did last summer. Hope you enjoy it, or that you live long enough to read it thoroughly.
The right move at the right moment.
"Bird's Nest" Shot. Courtesy of Ogilvy 360.
Besides what our marketing statements said (that this were the first Games where athletes were allowed to blog) there are several other reasons why this made sense.
First and foremost: Amateurism. Yeah, I know, most of this guys aren't exactly amateurs in the full sense of the word, but you get the point. The same program applied to, say, the Football (soccer) world cup, wouldn't of worked as well as it did for the Olympics. Most athletes at an Olympiad are not celebrities. They might have a small degree of recognition, but the general public does not know them.
That radically changes during the Games. The public eye is in search of these people, hungry for news and stories. That is where we came in, providing content straight from the source.
The time zone difference also played a big part. Most of the action happened while the western hemisphere was sleeping or at work. This made the internet a key player.
The Right Mix.
Ogilvy 360 performed wonderfully during the recruitment phase. Voices of the Olympic Games ended up hosting 101 athlete blogs, representing 31 sports and 25 countries. Although this is a minimal sample of what goes on during the games it was, in my humble opinion, a very nice mix that portrayed their fellow athletes quite well.
Since the program was about hearing the Voices of this guys, recruitment was the key element.
I must admit that the idea of opening up and putting lenovo's brand behind people we didn't know raised some eyebrows here and there.
Now that the thing is over I'm delighted to say that what this athletes wrote about, the way they shared the good the bad and the ugly, the sheer openness and honesty did not cease to amaze me every single day during those fantastic two weeks.
They were sports heroes, now they became my personal marketing heroes.
One Idea. Endless access points.
PC at the iLounge featuring the "voices" site. Courtesy of Ogilvy 360
The idea itself was quite simple: enabling athlete blogging. After getting the right mix of athletes we needed to ensure that their words traveled far and quick.
The site and the way it was thought was just a channel, a place where feeds came in and went out to the various distribution services that orbited around the program. Simply put: athlete posts feeds were aggregated at the voices site and then redistributed as aggregated RSS feeds that powered Facebook Apps, Mobile Phone devices and anything anyone wanted to do with the outcome.
One example of this was what Mark Cahill did for Cycling.com; where he took advantage of the RSS filters we put in place to show only those posts written by Cyclists.
All of that was enabled with the help of Yahoo Pipes and quite a bit of programming on the Voices site.
Lessons learned
Too much happened over the past 9 months. Tons of ideas, reduced turnaround times, pressure, just to name a few. Here's the list of things I've learnt:
- Ideas will flow like rivers, it is execution that matters
- One must learn to focus and discard things quickly
- Anything can be done
- Outsourced stuff does not always work as it should
- Distributed content is the future
- Days can span longer than 24 hours. They can also last a lot less.
- I love chaos. I might rant, but I'd rather be underwater and crazy than doing business as usual.
- I am fortunate to work where I do and, particularly with the people I work with.
I know I left a ton of stuff out, maybe for another post. (Not likely to happen)
(Disclaimer: I have not posted results, targets adn the like because I'm sure David is going to take care of that).
Post-vacation, post-Olympic cleanup
Picture a bomb exploding inside your computer. Imagine that it scatters files, folders and emails all over the place. On the desktop, under various folders under that lousy micorsoft idea that is known as "My Documents", and every other corner of the hard drive. That should give you an idea of the state of (un)tidyness my ThnkPad yields.
I got to the point where I had more stuff on my desktop than my desktop was able to display. And I use small icons. And I have a 1400 x 1280 screen resolution. Finding anything had become an ordeal.
And I havent yet mentioned emails. Amidst 24 x 7 Olympic watch and way too much stuff to handle, admin and think some emails went without reply for far longer than I like. Usually I reply within the hour; while clearing stuff today I noticed some had gone without a reply for some 20-odd days. Shame on me.
So, after all the fun and exitement that the Olympics represented I'm down to the task of trying to put some sense back into my file system and email. It is similar to the day after throwing a party: you have to clean up everything. Only difference is that I get to clean my computer without a hangover.
Out and Away
I'm starting my vacation tomorrow morning. Timing couldn't be more perfect. Although there are still a couple fo days left till the Olympics close on Sunday I think the program can survive without me.
There has been a certain ammount of turmoil and unrest lately; time off is more than welcome.
I'll try to post every once in a while, maybe upload some pictures as well.
Refreshing Voices
What on earth led me to believe this week was going to be somewhat quieter? The exact oposite is true; it has been a crazy week, with little sleep, lots of things to do and some fire drills.
We have just made a minor face lift to the "Voices of the Olympic Games" site.
Odd timing, you might think, since we're only 1 week into the games and with one more week to go. Well, we realized he had an overflow of content coming in, and felt that our visitors might loose a lot of the action.
What has happened is that most of the page is absolutely dynamic and ever changing. There are only 2 elements that remain static, and I might "fix" that soon...
We have such an overflow of cool video, pics and posts coming in from where the action is happening that there might be some sort of information overload!
Now visitors will be able to see 5 featured stories, the latest 4 youtube videos, the twitter feed, the latest pictures and the latest athlete posts on a single glimpse.
Go ahead and pay "voices" a visit; then let me know what you think!
So it begins (and it ends)
Since I didn't make it to China, I spent the morning watching the most amazing Olympic openning ceremony ever. It had quite a bunch of breath taking moments, but you'll probably watch that yourself if you haven't already.
This marks a sort of culmination of a lot of work. Not that I can sit back and relax, quite on the contrary, the next couple of weeks will be crazy, but I can't help but get a feeling of culmination this day, 08-08-08.
Although I already know what I will be doing after the games end there is a certain sense of "what's next?" lurking somewhere in my mind.
First thing will be to regroup my ideas. I have neglected many things in this time, both personally and profesionally; so straigting the wrongs is a top priority.
Some acknowledgments are due, I'd say. David, thanks for the inspiring ideas and Challenges; Rohit and Kaitlyn I've been honored to work with you on this. Alan, as I usually say: I speak more with you than I do with my wife! It has been a blast. Tim, we'll keep on a close loop, but thanks for everything-Olympically-delivered.
Let the games begin and enjoy the show!
Rambles and Riff Raff vol. 1
I thought I'd start honoring the "rambles and riff raff about all this and that" tagline on this blog starting a weekly unordered list of loosely connected thoughts. This fits everything that is on my mind but not long enough for a post on itself.
- Argentina is screwed as a country. Sad to say, but true nonetheless. Too much stuff going on and I don't want to blog about it no more.
- Less than a month to go for the opening of Beijing 2008. I should be freaking out, but I'm not. I do expect this weekend to be the last one I take off until August 8, 2008.
- Fairly happy with the recent buzz around the "Voices of the Olympic Games" program. Also some mentions around the "Podium". Great feedback, took some of that this week as you probably witnessed.
- Personal life is in turmoil, but for good.
- I've ditched twitter. Maybe for good, might go back to it for the games. I simply lost interest.
- My Spanish blog is almost ready. It is live, but still not "launched".
- I still hate translations. And it is only bound to get worst.
- I will never work for a TOP Olympic sponsor again in my life
. I feel like I've pushed everything in my life (personal and professional) until "after the games". I'm starting to fear the emptiness inside I'll feel after the games are over. After all I have devoted the past 9 months to "Olympic Stuff". - I miss blogging somewhat smartly.