Wednesday, 31 December 2008

Project Methodology


I found this old picture in a folder on my desktop and it made me chuckle, its a classic and often used by digital professionals to talk to people, clients and colleagues to explain why project methodology is important and why documentation and boring things like technical and functional specification documents take time to produce and should be read.

Far too often in my career too much has been left open to interpretation and this often results in projects running a bit like this cartoon.

I hope I am not alone in struggling with process, we are always reviewing ours and evolving it but the irony being most agencies process is run on a basis the 3 stage process of KBS - Kick, Bollocks, Scramble - chuck as much resource at it as we need to get it done usually in the last two weeks of a project.

Too much process stiffle's creativity and leads to agencies thinking they can't do a website for less than £500k, not enough leads to a £20k website costing the agency £500k - its a conundrum that can only be solved by a good client:agency relationship run on trust not fear.

Wii to be used by the Pentagon for Battle Robots

I've put a couple of mad Wii hacks and inventions up here and now it looks like the next people to show interest in using the Wii for something it wasn't intended are the US Army

How to Make a Hover Board like in Back To The Future - well almost

Funny clip from the Gadget show. I want one.

What was the world doing online over Christmas



A nice post here showing some great graphs of activity online over Christmas from shopping to blogging etc.

Another Best of 2008 Viral/Guerilla/Stunt Video collection

Definitely come in use over the next year, as much as i hate lists sometimes they are useful.

Agency Christmas Cards

Another reference for next year here is a list and example of over 120+ Agency Christmas cards that were sent out this year.

List

Burger King - Whopper Virgins



This is pretty funny, the new BK film online Called Whopper Virgins but at the same time pretty awful.
BK scours the world in pursuit of "Whopper Virgins,"

Searching far and wide, villagers from Thailand, Romania that have never had a burger, that "don't even HAVE A WORD for 'burger'!" -- will they prefer the Whopper to the Big Mac? The ultimate taste test.



I absolutely loved Whopper Freakout, and BK has consistently been one of the most progressive thinking brands in terms of the use of online, interactive and digital formats, and using content as a currency to create experiences for people.

This however may be a step to far, I guess great work always divides an audience, so make up your own mind - it has a sort of Borat feel to it for me?