Over the course of its extensive history, gyro Manchester has worked on an abundance of clients and campaigns, from the creation of ‘Frontier Bob’, the mascot character for Frontierland theme park in Morecambe, to looking after global business-to-business giants such as ICI, British Steel and DAF trucks, with whom they have worked with for over 40 years. Today, the agency works with a roster of distinguished clients, including HP, AkzoNobel, ABN AMRO, Tetra Pak and DuPont.

Beginning as CAS in 1913, gyro Manchester has come a long way from its humble beginnings as a sole trader, selling advertising space in the local press from a bicycle. One of the first pure-play B2B agencies, CAS was for a long period owned by the Silverwood Group, alongside Alva Press, Customer Insight, Broadcast PR and Manchester Picture Company. A merger in 1998 saw CAS join forces with Broughton-Jacques, to become Cicero. And, through a series of acquisitions, Cicero bolstered its standing with established agency brands such as Hyde Burnett, Cypher Direct and Opus. In 2007, Cicero became part of the independent global network gyro

gyro was recently named BtoB Magazine’s 2013 Agency of the Year, in the large agency category. It is also currently the International Business Marketing Association’s Global Agency of the Year.

Managing Director of gyro Manchester Danny Turnbull, who joined the company in the 1990s, said, “When a business has such an impressive lineage it creates a burden of responsibility upon its current custodians, so it makes me immensely proud to have helped to steer this great and venerable agency into its 100th year.”

The agency will be marking its centenary with a series of events and thought leadership pieces, involving both contemporaries and clients. Highlights of the planned calendar of events include ‘AdApts’, a celebration of iconic advertising that will interpret original campaigns to bring work into the modern day. gyro Manchester will also be future gazing in their ‘100 Wonders’ competition. Focusing on the next generation, gyro will ask local children what they think life will be like in the future. The agency also recently completed a Consultancy Challenge with MBA students from Lancaster University Management School, whose research explores the agency model of the future. The results of this will be published later in the year.

“There are only a handful of agency brands that I am aware of that have achieved this feat,” said Turnbull. “Which without falling into the trap of being a chippy, parochial northerner (which I clearly am), to have done so in the North of England, in such challenging operating environments, makes it an even more impressive achievement.”

###

Notes to editor:

For more information, please contact:

Rami Aulak / David Cohen

Eulogy!

T: 020 3077 2000

E: gyro@eulogy.co.uk

About gyro

Our mission is to create ideas that are humanly relevant. gyro is an Advertising Age Top 50 global ideas shop with 600 creative minds in 15 offices around the world. Globally gyro works with Audi, BBC, Deloitte, HP, John Deere, The Kellogg Company, Kimberly-Clark, Newell-Rubbermaid, SAP, Shell, Virgin Atlantic and USG. www.gyro.com

Following an impressive breakfast buffet and hosted by BIMA chair Justin Cooke and executive member Justin Pearse, the event featured presentations from John Webb, Cloud Marketing Director at Rackspace; Ron Peterson, Social Director at AKQA; and Dara Nasr, Head of Agency Sales at Twitter.

Rackspace’s John kicked off the presentations with a brief analysis of the current social landscape, stressing the critical importance of distinctive, high-quality content in an age of what he termed a ‘content deluge’. In addition to content, John was keen to highlight the redefinition and increasing significance of context. This, he explained, involved making stories relevant to consumers, using social insight, location data and as it becomes increasingly accessible, human API data, in order to effectively and personally engage with consumers.

Ron, of leading digital agency AKQA, argued that marketers need to invest more in social media on the basis of three key properties:

-social provides a truly unique channel that is always active and live

-effective use of social provides brand value through trust, sentiment and advocacy

-social media allows businesses to uniquely connect with their consumers on an individual basis.

The future of social is not to connect more, but to connect smarter, Ron asserted. Social is, and should be more than just a platform for marketing purposes, and will become used more frequently to inform and guide all aspects of management, from operations through to sales.

The distinctive nature of social media was echoed by Twitter’s Dara Nasr, who provided compelling examples of how Twitter connects brands to their customers in real-time, allowing businesses to gauge the tone and sentiment of consumers and to respond accordingly. Dara argued that in order to fully engage with social, brands must absorb it as part of their wider communication strategy, rather than treat it as a tool to be employed on a campaign by campaign basis.

You can find the presentation slides from Rackspace and Twitter here.

To conclude, attendees were given the opportunity to question our expert panel on the future of social media, how to best to go about investing in social strategy and the importance of an integrated marketing strategy.

The event was well-received and well-attended, with many of those who couldn’t attend in person following BIMA’s live tweet stream online. It was a promising start to this new series of events from BIMA. Photographs to follow soon!

To keep up to date with BIMA’s event news, please register for our newsletter here.

The summit was a great success bringing together senior level Digital Managers with leading digital solution providers for a series of pre-selected 30min meetings to discuss services and solutions required in the 2013 digital strategy.

The summit facilitated approximately 380 30minute meetings over 2 days.

The attending buyers held a collective Annual Digital Budget in excess of £40million.

The solution providers held a wealth of experience in all aspects of Digital marketing services making this an extraordinary event to be a part of.

I have no doubt that the testimonies will speak for themselves, the solution providers will see this as a major source of new business and the buyers will have benefited immensely by taking the opportunity to meet a number of solution providers of their choice. Networking in this professional and pro-active environment has provided the opportunity to review companies and services available, to obtain the views of industry specialists and make the necessary connections to take their digital strategy forward in 2013. There were also a number of highly informative seminars held making this a must attend event for digital professionals.

Look out for information regarding the iDigital Summit 2013 to be held on 23^rd & 24^th September at The Radison Blu Hotel, London Stansted Airport.

For further information please contact the iDigital Team: idigital@forumevents.co.uk

Main Sponsor:

Media Partners:

Hosted by:

The Digital Business area within T-Systems UK develops Internet-based solutions for large corporations and mid-sized companies. The expertise is coming from T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH, a 100 % subsidiary and an end-to-end web-service provider. The company’s 1.400 employees serve customers from all industries by translating web innovations into trend-setting services for the digital business and social ecosystem. These include solutions for e-commerce, mobile and social business, e-portals, cloud-based services as well as web IT management. With a wealth of experience our specialists create tailored approaches to enhance your digital presence in the market and keep you one step ahead of your competitors. Services include consulting, development, testing and operational support in many fields. For the tenth year in a row, we are the number one in the Internet Agency Ranking 2012.

For more information please visit our website.

The iDigital Summit is a B2B networking event bring together Digital Marketing Companies and Senior Marketing Managers of buyer companies actively seekng digital marketing services. The format is a series of 30min meetings over a day and a half with a pre-determined itinerary to ensure both suppliers and buyers have the opportunity to choose and speak with relevant parties and forge business relations. If you are a buyer or supplier interested in being a part of The iDigital Summit, contact us via the web-site, we’re here to facilitate the meetings.

For further information contact the iDigital Team  E. idigital@forumevents.co.uk

Hosted by:

Experian’s range of digital products, including Hitwise, CheetahMail and Alchemy, ensure you are ahead of your competition in search, analytics, email, mobile and social media.  And when combined with our consumer classification and segmentation tool, Mosaic UK, we can provide you with the data, insights and tools you need to execute multi-channel campaigns with successful results.

22nd & 23rd October 2012 – Brighton Hilton Metropole

The iDigital Summit is a B2B networking event bring together Digital Marketing Companies and decision makers of buyer companies actively seekng digital marketing services. The format is a series of 30min meetings over a day and a half with a pre-determined itinerary to ensure both suppliers and buyers have the opportunity to choose and speak with relevant parties and forge business relations. If you are a buyer or supplier interested in being a part of The iDigital Summit, contact us via the web-site, we’re here to facilitate the meetings.

For further information contact the iDigital Team  E. idigital@forumevents.co.uk

Hosted by:

Strange is a creative digital marketing agency. Clients achieve exceptional results from our award  winning planning, creative, web development, ecommerce and digital marketing services.

Clients benefit from our approach and experience.  Whether it’s a CPA focused marketing campaign, a complex ecommerce integration project or just brilliant creative, we help our clients achieve their business objectives.

Currently ranked in the top 15 independent agencies by RAR and voted Digital Agency of the Year by The Drum, we work with a diverse range of B2B and B2C clients including Barclays, Belron, Brittany Ferries, Fuji Film, Google, MTV and Nike.

22nd & 23rd October 2012 – Brighton Hilton Metropole

The iDigital Summit is a B2B networking event bring together Digital Marketing Companies and decision makers of buyer companies actively seekng digital marketing services. The format is a series of 30min meetings over a day and a half with a pre-determined itinerary to ensure both suppliers and buyers have the opportunity to choose and speak with relevant parties and forge business relations. If you are a buyer or supplier interested in being a part of The iDigital Summit, contact us via the web-site, we’re here to facilitate the meetings.

For further information contact the iDigital Team  E. idigital@forumevents.co.uk

Hosted By:

http://www.forumevents.co.uk/forum/iDigital/idigital-october-upcoming-events.html

Suzy Schmitz, Ivor Drake and Calum Murray from Kemp Little will be running a free session on everything you need to know to make sure you’re digital advertising is compliant with the changing regulation including:

• what marketing communications are now regulated

• specific issues for online – social network pages, blogs, user content and articles

• the ASA’s sanctions and approach to using them The session will consist of an interactive presentation, allowing delegates the opportunity to raise any particular concerns and share experiences, as issue are addressed.

Date: 23rd March 2011, 9.00am to 10.30am (registration from 8.30am)

Venue: Kemp Little LLP I Solicitors I Cheapside House I 138 Cheapside I London EC2V 6BJ (click here for a map)

Cost: Free

To book please go to: http://www.kemplittle.com/event.html?action=view_event_new&id=2243

How to Enter
Online entry is simple and free of charge and the criteria is set below:

• Headquartered in Europe
• At least revenue of EUR 1.5m in the last financial year (2010)

Entry deadline: 4^th March 2010 at www.mediamomentum.co.uk

The event – 19^th May, Barcelona
Companies will then be ranked by their annual revenue growth rate between the three most recent financial years and the CEO’s and founders of the 50 fastest growing companies will be invited to the exclusive W hotel in Barcelona on 19 May, to participate in the CEO Summit and the Media Momentum Awards celebrations.

There will be an interesting mix of business leaders and entrepreneurs from the digital media economy, visionaries and inspiring personalities. We will discuss and brainstorm about relevant topics facing the internet economy and philosophise about the future.

Last year’s event was a great success with 150 of the most influential decision makers from the digital media industry attending. The Top 50 companies in the 2010 list collectively grew their revenue base from €786m to an incredible €1,955m in a 3 year period.

Previous attendees and the Top 50 included representatives from vente-privee.com, Bigpoint, Seatwave, CCP Games, Moneybookers Yahoo, Google, King.com, Net-a-porter, YouGov, TradeDoubler, Shazam Latitude, Vibrant Media, Betfair, The Search Works, Profero, Conchango, Unanimis, LoveFilm, Toptable and many more.

Good luck!

Our interactive HR Forums are designed to provide practical updates, and a chance for debate and questions on topical employment law issues for business owners, finance directors and commercial managers as well as in-house counsel and senior HR professionals. The sessions culminate in an interactive case study which will provide an opportunity to consolidate knowledge and share experiences.

Registrations are from 8.30am and breakfast is provided. The sessions start at 9.00am and run until 10.30am.

For more information and to BOOK your places please visit http://www.kemplittle.com/html/stay-posted/events.html

We hope to see you soon!

2 February 2011:        Atypical workers

On-going concerns about the economy have resulted in businesses being reluctant to take on full-time employees. Instead many are turning to atypical working practices (such as agency workers, part-time employees, consultants and other flexible resources) to plug the gaps in the workforce. The number of part-time workers has reached a record high – 7.98 million. There are also an estimated 1.3 million agency workers in the UK, including many in the technology sector. Employers see atypical workers as lower risk and more cost effective than full-time employees. But are they really?

9 March 2011:            Age discrimination update

Is age discrimination a ‘ticking time bomb’ for employers?  It might sound like just another form of employment protection, but many of the issues are unique to this protected category, claims are on the rise and later this year, things will be further complicated by the repeal of the default retirement age and the associated retirement procedures. 

In this interactive session we will recap on the basics and bring you up to date on recent developments, with a focus on if, when and how to retire employees.

Well, I doubt I’ll win that one, it’s sure to be a tough category with plenty of strong contenders, but I can tell you that today has been a little bit of a struggle to say the least…

Through sheer force of will and due to popular demand we’ve managed to remember how to turn on our computers and published the results on the awards site. Congratulations are certainly in order for the lucky winners but I really hope that everyone had as good a time as I did. It was wonderful to see the place packed to the rafters.

As I said last night we were really ambitious with the awards this year, we gave ourselves three objectives, to make the awards more Relevant, Accessible and Rewarding and I’m really pleased to say that we did pretty well!

• We represented a wider range of the industry with 37 awards.
• We had 30% more entrants than last year
• The attendance records of previous years were shattered with well over 700 people on the guest-list!

It took the support of a great many people to make it happen and it would be difficult to overstate how grateful I am to the awards team, the BIMA exec, our partners and of course our wonderful sponsors but most of all I’m very grateful to those that entered and attended, without you we wouldn’t have an awards at all, you made it a truly memorable event. Thank you all and I hope to see you there next year!

It is one of the longest established courses in its field and this gives it an exceptional wealth of experience upon which to draw. This year twenty students from sixteen countries have come together to create five eclectic projects.

The very apt theme this year is ’searching for a contemporary definition of Interactive Media’ which the students believe to be ‘the SYNERGY between data, technology and humans.

We think this sounds like well worth a visit.

Location:

School of Media
London College of Communication
Elephant & Castle
London SE1 6SB

Nearest Tube: Elephant & Castle (Northern & Bakerloo Lines)

For more information visit http://www.synergy0809.co.uk/

David is a true visionary so if you or your special clients aren’t already going I’d highly recommend that you do. David somehow managed to get hundreds of different public bodies to grant him permission to build the Eye opposite the home of democracy – that is no mean feat – although it did take years, blood, sweat and tears.

David believes that nothing is impossible and we need more people like this in the UK.

He is doing some amazing technical and eco stuff all over the world so come along on Wednesday. Click here to book.

In brief, I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’ve been taken completely by surprise by just how much needs to be done up front. For example, who’d have thought that you need to book venues six months in advance, isn’t there a lastminute500seatervenuehire.com or something?!

But… we’re making progress I think.

I met the Digital Arts team last week, they’re a fantastic bunch and I’m really looking forward to working with them, Mus’s advice has been inspirational, god knows what I’d have done without Laura’s project plan and assistance and I’m looking forward to seeing the sponsorship dollars roll in from Selen. I also met with Paul (Walsh) to discuss my initial ideas and again without his support I’d have been scuppered to say the least. Thanks mate.

So… we now have a first draft proposal for the event as a whole and an initial timeline, I’m hoping that we can continue the progress that Clare made last year and introduce a few new things. I’m looking forward to letting you know what we have in store for you, I’m sure you’ll love it, and for those of you that might be interested in being a sponsor, we’re going to have some really good packages available.

The Committee are all-but sorted out, we should be able to announce them early next week, and those that are on board now have already been massively helpful. It’s a shame I can’t name names yet but I’m extremely grateful for the support I’ve received for this mammoth task particularly with the event which looks like being the lion’s share of the work.

Finally, please do leave a comment or get in touch (chris at kempt dot co dot uk) with any suggestions you have for categories or things you’d like to see in the awards this year. I can’t promise they’ll all make it in but you know how these things go: if you don’t ask…

Cheerio!

CX

The presentation will cover Virtual Earth, which is an integrated set of services that enable you to easily add mapping functionality to a website or back office application. In these sessions, the Microsoft team will provide a brief overview of Virtual Earth before presenting a showcase of some of the most innovative uses of the platform.

This event is free to Full Commercial and Associate members, and you are urged to register online now at the BIMA website to avoid disappointment. Places will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

Register now.

A unique insight into client agency relationships – why they fail and how to reduce the risk

Speaker: Kerry Glazer, Chief Executive, AAR

• Date: Wednesday 8th October 2008
• Time: 08:30 – 10:00 hrs
• Venue: Soho House Members’ Club, 21 Old Compton Street London W1

Join your colleagues and friends over breakfast and hear Kerry’s thoughts on:

• Why things go wrong and how to avoid it. Achieving and maintaining successful relationships is of critical importance to both clients and agencies.
• For clients, appointing and working in a productive way with the right agency for their needs can fundamentally affect the success of their brand or service, and the communications that promote or support that brand or service.
• For agencies, forging successful and enduring relationships with their clients gives the agency stability, adds to their credentials and experience and, very often, creates circumstances whereby they can do their best work.

For clients, appointing and working in a productive way with the right agency for their needs can fundamentally affect the success of their brand or service, and the communications that promote or support that brand or service.

For agencies, forging successful and enduring relationships with their clients gives the agency stability, adds to their credentials and experience and, very often, creates circumstances whereby they can do their best work.

So why do so many client/agency relationships, which start out with the intention of achieving the above, go so wrong, so frequently?

In order to gain more knowledge and insight into this phenomenon, AAR has commissioned a significant piece of qualitative research to examine these relationships in depth. Hear the debrief on the findings of the research, together with some suggestions as to how you can substantially reduce the risk of relationship failure.

About Kerry

Kerry has worked in the communications agency business for the last two decades, with stints in at JWT, WCRS, Limbo (BBH) and Kendall Tarrant (now The Talent Business) during that period. She joined AAR (the UK’s leading agency search, selection and relationship consultancy) as Commercial Director in 1999, was promoted to Managing Director of the company in November 2000 and then to Chief Executive in February 2006. Kerry is a member of Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, the Direct Marketing Society, the Marketing Society, Women in Advertising and Communications (Wacl) and sits also on the CIPS Specialist Knowledge Group for Marketing and the Support Committee for NABS.

Register now

I met with two very cool people from Microsoft yesterday and we’ve come up with a cunning plan to provide a calendar of networking events for BIMA members throughout the year. Moreover, they will be completely free for members to attend.

If you’re a brand and would like to support BIMA and its members whilst promoting your technology/brand, feel free to get in touch.

If you’d like to avail of such networking events, please consider becoming a BIMA member.

More to come…

So that’s what we have done this year.

Relevance

This year the awards are going to ambitiously serve the interactive design & development community with the detail of recognition they desire. 2008 sees the a reduction in the top level to 9 categories; B2B, B2C, Website , Games, Integrated Campaign, Social Media , Film & Animation, & Talent.

The top-level categories then have subcategories, into which you submit your abundant talents. The new sub – categories allow the detail, the technology and whatever nuances that play a part within the overall experience to be recognised and revered.

There are so many facets, assets and attributes required in this era of interactivity to = make a truly great experience that are largely unrecognised as a piece of art in their own right. BIMA 2008 will recognise those nuances as well as emerging disciplines in the best ever breakdown of categories and awards.

Within each top-level category we have also introduced a new feature, the wondrous wildcard called ” The Little Bit of Wickedness Award”. We want to see the devil in the detail. You know when there is a piece of work that is just truly mouth watering but you just don’t know why…It’s just perfect. Well, enter it in this category.

It could be the logo of an online game, a sound effect, or an incredible flash component that you developed. It could even be a whole site.

All of this attention to detail, access to specialised areas and talents to enter, are relevant in our current industry. In 2008 we are acknowledging the breadth of what you / we do and recognising new and emerging disciplines.

Aspirational

Not every category will win an award. “Mmmmm”, I hear you say.

Why? Well, while we do our best to recognise great work, if there just isn’t anything great within a category then we can’t justify awarding a BIMA.

Basically, BIMA’s are not easy to get. They are to be loved and desired, and ultimately, you need to work hard to get one! But, having looked at the industry year and some of the folios out there, there is incredible work all worthy of a BIMA!

Fun

The devil is in the pixel. It’s one of the powers behind all of our careers. The necessary detail that we all work with. But it’s a detail that is overlooked and sometimes ignored.

That attention to detail is what this year’s awards are all about. We asked ourselves some questions? It’s not good enough, or fair enough to just have an award for the best website. How many combined talents, technologies, creatives and details go into making that one experience?

Some elements of a site raise the benchmark, while other areas of the same site could have been better.
Whereas the awards of old seemed to bundle all these individual assets, attributes, and important details together; this years awards will recognise them as individual components.

For example that wondrous sound effect on the button of a game that you cannot stop pressing, the incredible flash animation that heads up an otherwise dull site, a social blog that has revolutionised your life, and not forgetting that pioneering user interface that challenges all others. And let’s not overlook the abundant talent in the UK. And my, what enormous talent we have!

And why is all this fun? We are working in the most fun, fast paced, futuristic creative industry. So fun is in everything we potentially do. We need to have fun in awards and this year, the awards ceremony aims to be more relevant and aspirational…and also a massive excuse to have as much fun as possible!

It’s relevant to the BIMA community since the space is shaping up into a very interesting landscape from an advertising, monetisation and application development perspective, and BIMA members (likely to have some knowledge here) are well placed to benefit.

We make online advertising (in fact a lot of online advertising as Interpublic Group’s largest digital agency here in the UK, as I was reminded recently) in order to deliver as many messages as we can to targeted audiences to get them to remember the brand name or to click on to be more engaged and buy something.

We also develop communities, often by association with passions, football, tennis, online gaming, web developers, no less, and this is where the world of social computing is so challenging. Which is better – to run a campaign of x impressions that gets 0.02 click through (say 300 people) or to write a widget that is downloaded by 300 people. The answer is probably both are relevant, but do a different job. If the end game is engagement, time spent with the brand, or memorability, what’s your vote?

Think about it. Write about it. It’s a good debate.

BIMA is now calling for judges for the BIMA Awards 2008 (The BIMAs™).  If you would like to be considered for selection as a judge for this year’s event, please go to this page on the BIMA Web site, complete the form and submit your details online.

The deadline for the Call for Judges is close of business 11th July 2008

The judging panel will comprise exclusively of senior practitioners working within the interactive and associated industries.  When the selection has been made, all applicants will receive an e-mail to advise them whether they have been successful.

Deadline for entries to the BIMAs 2008 is close of business on 31st July 2008  (the entry form will be available on the BIMA Web site shortly)

BIMA Awards Gala Dinner, Thursday 27th November 2008 at the Bloomsbury Club, London

Good luck!

We’re limited this little meetup to 50, so please join the Facebook event now. Alternatively you can leave a comment to register your interest.

Sponsored by Propel – Recruiters from digital, recruiting for digital

Hope to see you there!

To win a free ticket, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post and I’ll pick 3 names out of a hat. To demonstrate transparency, I’ll stream it live via my Qik channel.

I’ll draw the names on Friday.

Tickets are free for BIMA Members and just £15 for non-members.

We only have room at the Soho Private Members club for 200 people and tickets are expected to go even faster than the Great Facebook Debate that we hosted last year.

So register now to avoid disappointment.

People are flying in from around the world just for this party so it’s set to be a night to remember!

If you need a hotel, why not check out http://www.londonhousehotels.com/ it does the job and it’s quite cheap.

Register now.

Hope to see you there!

The venue (Soho House) is restricted to 200, so you’ll need to be quick to register when we open the doors. If you think the Great Facebook Debate was quick to sell out, wait till you see this party.

Keep an eye on my Twitter feed and this blog to be the first to hear about registration.

Please get in touch if you’d like to sponsor.

[Update: I've just created a Facebook event page]

Let me know if you’d like us to discuss anything in particular and I’ll publish a post to summarise the minutes in a few days.

The most interesting conversation to come out of SXSW for me was Sarah Lacy’s unfortunate interview with Mark Zuckerberg. Paul Carr (by the way, welcome to Twitter Paul!) captured the moment succinctly

Sarah Lacy (SL): “Thank you – thank you all so much. Now let’s hear it for this guy – Mark Zuckerberg everyone! So, I wanna start by asking – as I did in my book – why do you think Facebook… which I use like all the time – is so great?”

Mark Zuckerberg (MZ): “Well…”

SL: “What I mean is – what is it about Facebook that has attracted not just me but millions of other people like me to sign up?”

MZ: “Terrorism.”

SL: “I totally agree. Can you say more?”

MZ: “Sure…”

SL: “Can you believe this guy? Wow – I mean his answers are so short – seriously I think he’s the biggest loser I’ve ever interviewed. Hey Mark, can I tell the story about the first time I allowed you to be interviewed?”

MZ: “Sure… I guess.”

SL: “Ok, so, like, I’m interviewing Mark – and we’ve been talking for like twenty hours and Mark was like ‘I need to pee’ and I was like ‘that’s so interesting and sexy’, tell me more and he’s like ‘no I really need to pee’ and I’m like talking about my book and like the next thing I know he’s peed all over the floor and it’s like so cute and hilarious.”

MZ: “Thanks for sharing that.”

(Audience break into spontaneous standing ovation, in awe at Zuckerberg’s razor sharp retort. Fat guy at the front screams and faints. Twitter crashes.)

SL: “Ok, so getting back to Facebook, I wanna ask you about privacy and Facebook Beacon.”

MZ: “Ok, well, let me say that Beacon isn’t something we’re really focussed on as a company right now – I mean it’s like not something I’ve even really heard of. What people don’t understand is that it was developed by our platform team and not our advertising team – so really it’s not advertising at all. I mean, in the Lebanon, kids are actually using it to interact with Coca Cola which – and this is unbelievable – makes them realise what they’re missing by not being in America and that’s why there will never be another nine eleven. But we’re not the only company delivering world peace through invasive advertising, we’re just one of the people in the space. We want to focus on building the platform for world peace and let others build on that.”

SL: “Ok, stop talking now. Jeez! It seems to me anyway, that Beacon is not really the issue. In fact, I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. The big issue is the news feed, what can you say about that?”

MZ: “Well, it’s just something we’re not really focussed on having to explain right now.”

SL: “Ok, that’s fine. Now – last night you told me you were gay and like to fuck squirrels – can I tell that story?”

MZ: “Er…”

SL: “Ok, well, I guess I should have let you make that announcement, gosh darn I’m so ditzy (giggles). So what’s it like to be rich and to have journalists, like, really want to sleep with you?”

MZ: “It’s just not something I’m focussed on right now.”

SL: “How about if I do this?”

(Lacey begins to fellate Zuckerberg but, remarkably, is able to keep talking….)

SL: “Well, sure, that makes it so much easier.”

(Three rows of fat guys at the front of the room orgasm as one at the incredible comedic timing of Mark ‘Bill Hicks’ Zuckerberg as Lacey switches position for a reach around.)

SL: “Ok, well, that’s all we have time for – if you want to know more about how awesome – but dorky – this rich guy is, I guess you’ll all have to read my book. It also has the story about how I famously poured water into Serge Brin’s laptop on my show at Yahoo.com. That was sooo funny. And when I hyped Kevin Rose on the front cover of Business Week and then sold a book to Penguin on the back of it about overhyped web 2.0 companies. Don’t worry, Mark, I’ll give you a discount. And I’ll even throw in a copy for your girlfriend. What’s her name?”

MZ: “Uh…”

SL: “Ok, great! Well thank you very much Mark – it’s been a really insightful conversation on one point five billion levels. And, to the audience, I just wanna say thank you both for staying.”

Session ends.

Paul’s original post from which I stole all of his content can be found here. Please subscribe to his blog. He’s hilarious!

As a result of the poor interview, Mark called for a second interview which Jemima Kiss articulates very well.

To his credit. Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that a lot of people were frustrated by the wasted opportunity of yesterday’s keynote interview with Sarah Lacy. He did the interview on the condition that she was the interviewer, so whose to blame there?

In the rather more tropical surroundings of a safari-themed bar, Zuckerberg announces that he thought he’d drop by “because yesterday’s keynote just wasn’t enough fun”. That media training has really been paying off.

“One of the big pieces of feedback from yesterday was that people didn’t get a chance to ask enough questions. People were more interesting in product development and technical questions – I’m really interested in those issues like scalability but we thought we’d open up for another 20-30 minutes today.”

So in the midst of the developer garage, what did his home crowd really want to know?

Data portability is a big issue. Zuckerberg said that he wouldn’t necessarily commit to signing up to the same open standards as the other big social networks. “Beacon is a first iteration of that approach to help people share information. We are philosophically aligned with this openness and efficiency in the community but, at the same time, we don’t know what other people are doing and whether our policties are aligned.”

Robert Scoble got kicked off the site (albeit for just one day) because he appeared to be scraping data, rather than ’sharing it’.

Balancing the advantges of data portability with people’s privacy concerns is tricky: “We think sharing information is good, which is why we started this whole platform thing. But these are some of the questions that need to be worked out.”

Music: Is music a focus for the site? Not especially. The site didn’t predict how causal games like Scrabulous would take off (Zuckerberg plays it with this grandparents, aw). The great thing about having a platform is we don’t need to be editorial.

“We don’t need to say what will be the right applications because the market will sort that out for us, and the people that build the great products and applicatiosns will be able to build the great companies.”

It’s a very clever business model, because it lets the users determine the trends and leaves all the R&D to external companies. Nice.

Spam: Facebook will be cutting down on application spam, as he said yesterday: applications will be encouraged to focus on the level of proper engagement they have with their users rather than the number of installs, and the more popular apps will be able to send more invites.

China: He also said that he doesn’t look at time spent on the site as an important metric: Zuckerberg thinks that, like Google, the site should make communication more efficient and help people do what they need to do.

Facebook is looking at the issues of moving the business into China, said a very confident and relaxed Zuckerberg. He’s very open about it forom the start: “Making sure that people’s private information is private is a really important thing for us to do,” he said, explaining that there are only really two options in China; either have the government censor your site and impair the performance of traffic to it inside the country if it doesn’t like you, or have servers inside the country which will be shut down if you don’t follow their policies.

“There are ways to position these things make decisions and set them up to create minimal exposure,” he said. Now that China is on the verge of overtaking the US as the world’s biggest internet market, this strategy is increasingly important.

And has it been a strain for you, Mark, being under such scrutiny because of the success of Facebook? He’s now the world’s youngest billionaire, according to Forbes.

“That’s an interesting topic for a develop garage! I have a small group of really good friends and going through this whole experience of building the company has often been a strain but has helped build interesting friendships.”

Jemima’s original post from which I mercilessly stole her content can be found here. Jemima is also one of the few bloggers that I’m subscribed to, so make sure you’re tuned in. She has her finger well placed on the UK digital pulse.

I’m not sure I like either of Mark’s two options to expand into China. I don’t like the idea of filtering content on behalf of the government, full stop. But what’s the alternative?

Also, check out Rebecca Caroe‘s post on the BIMA blog about panel put together to discuss online advertising for newbies.

It’s been a while since I posted but MIX08 gives me a good opportunity to jump back in here.

MIX is billed as a 72 hour conversation and is in its third year. It’s a very different event for Microsoft and attracts industry heavyweights from the Web 2.0 world, design community, press and more. Speakers included Scoble, Lou Carbone, Loic Le Meur, David Armano, Kevin Rose, Guy Kawasaki hand from Microsoft Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie and Scott Guthrie.

So what went down? A lot….far too much to list here but here are some of the highlights

• IE8 beta 1
• Silverlight 2.0 beta 1 (with amazing demos including Hard Rock Memorabelia showing DeepZoom)
• Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview
• Expression Studio 2 Beta (contains Blend, Design, Encoder, Media and Web)
• Expression DeepZoom Composer

there was lots more but those are the highlights for the audience here. We also annoucned SQL Data Services which puts SQL in the cloud.

The highlights for me were the Hard Rock demo and the Guy Kawasaki intereview with Steve Ballmer – hilarious and stunningly open for the leader of Microsoft. Check it out now.

Check out http://sessions.visitmix.com/ for all sessions from the event (free) and don’t miss day one keynote.

Since the BIMA Awards were first introduced in 1984, they have undergone continuous development and always strived to encompass the constant changes within the interactive industry.

BIMA has never shrunk from its responsibility to reflect the very highest standards of creativity and innovation and caused controversy some years ago when it considered that the measure of work in one particular category was not of sufficient merit to be awarded a winner’s trophy. More recently, the industry applauded BIMA’s decision when it announced that the judge’s favourite – the BIMA Grand Prix – was the winning entry in the student category.

The BIMAs™ now rightly take their place on the top shelf of prestigious Awards, alongside the BAFTAs, the Brits and the Oscars.

As Chair of BIMA I’m very proud to show off our awards with this short video. Thanks to Hermione from Newspepper.com for doing a fantastic job.

I’m heading to Le Web 3 in Paris in the morning so I’ll try to catch up on some blog posts during my relaxing time on the train. Let me know if you’re going and would like to hook up.

I’m hosting the Great Facebook Debate this evening at the BT Auditorium. Tonight, the awesome venue will be home to more than 170 Facebook-thirsty enthusiasts, ready to pounce (I hope) on the speaker who deserves it most.

We sold out pretty much right away with over 100 tickets sold in less than 24 hours. We’ve signed up approximately 240 because you can always expect a high dropout rate at this type of event. So, I’m expecting to see at least 170 with a few joining me on the stage to keep BT’s ‘health and safety’ off my back.

With people flying in from at least 5 countries, and attendees coming from all walks of life, it should be an interesting conversation. If you haven’t been lucky enough to sign up, why not watch it live and get a chance to ask questions from wherever you are in the world.

Register now and watch the debate live.