Interact Congress 2008 is a conference about Connecting European eMarketing to be held in Berlin across 2-3 June. And being in Germany, it’s hosted by the German IAB and supported by all the national IABs (UK link here) and the European IAB.

And I’m truly honoured to have been invited to collaborate on the Interact Congress blog for 2008. I look forward to sharing my thoughts and ideas with some of Europe’s top bloggers on the blog when I get back from hols in 2 weeks. Please drop me a line either through the comments section below or direct to nr_gill@hotmail.com and let me know any thoughts or subjects you’d like me to raise.

I wonder if my new employers would like to send me out there to hob nob and spread the love?

And download an IAB report on UGC here.

I was watching the news a couple of weeks back when that plane crashed near Biggin Hill and all I could think of was why were they calling a fire engine an appliance? Has the world gone mad?

It was, and always will be, a fire engine. I found these examples too to show how the world truly has gone mad. Words in a before (real world) and after (mad world) order.

Retard - Mentally Impaired.

Handicapped - Physically Challenged.

Midget - Little Person.

Indian - Native American.

Oriental - Asian.

Stewardess - Flight Attendant.

Waiter/Waitress - Food Server.

Mankind - Humankind.

Postman - Letter Carrier.

Unemployed - Job Seeker.

Boob flash - Wardrobe Malfunction.

Rubbish Man - Sanitary Engineer.

And lastly (for now)… Focus Group - On-Demand Customer Collaboration.

(I think I may have found some of these via AdRants. Image.)

Was invited to present to some students at my old haunt the Solent University today. A bit of a digital 101, here it is for general consumption. And after uploading to slideshare makes me realise we need to change our font from StoneSans to Arial, Helvetica or Verdana!

For anyone who was there, thanks for listening and not throwing things at me & feel free to contact me using the comments below or email/IM me at nr_gill@hotmail.com

And the links in the deck are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le4aUAV1fA4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0

http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/?l=runs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT4dpFpiTgk

http://diesel.adidas.com/83ways.php

http://www.subservientchicken.com/

http://unlimited.orange.co.uk/flash/go

http://www.diesel.com/lockin/index.php

http://www.night-driving.com/

http://www.greenmyapple.org/

http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/home/home.jsp

http://www.membersproject.com/

http://apps.facebook.com/protectedpoke/ProtectedPoke.aspx

http://www.runlondon.com/RouteFinder

http://www.willyoujoinus.com/energyville/

http://twitter.com/direct2dell

http://twittervision.com

UPDATE 07.05

Thanks to the MA students today for listening to my ramblings.

Think you’ve got the next Gorilla inside you? Do you have Heidi’s in your sub-consciousness? Or could you bring a fresh take on a global issue? Creativity doesn’t always reside in the creative department. And here’s your chance to prove it and win a luxurious Cannes trip so you can be demanding, eccentric and quaff litres of fine wine and worse.

Getty Images have created the Ultimate Pitch competition: challenging you to respond to their creative brief with the propisition:

Express an idea that could make a world of difference.

The only catch is you have to use some Getty imagery, choons or video in your submission. Not too much of a hardship considering the breadth and quality of their work.

The competition is open to everyone from one man bands to global goliaths and is being judged by some of the most well-known big cheeses in the industry. So how about it?

Competition closes May 14.

Thanks to Andrew Ballantyne Gilbert from DDB London who created this and told me about this direct as an outreach to the AdAge Power 150 bloggers. Will share my pitch with you in due course.

Here’s the bump from our 19 week scan earlier this week. Amazed at how much they can check, especially the blood flow through the heart. Technology wooh! Even saw his/her tongue moving and swallowing stuff. Taken a liking to mint choc chip ice cream and green wine gums. Can’t be mine then Half way there!

I’ve had 2 emails this week from people who I used to work with asking me to join Naymz - a new kind of professional social network. Always a little skeptical, my first thought when the lovely Joanna’s invite popped up was, uh oh, here’s another Quechup. And then Nik’s email popped up. So having not heard of Naymz, decided to do some investigation. (You’ll also note a Linked In invite which I happily accepted as I know Murray well and am comfortable with the Linked In networking thing).

Back to the search: I actually found the most relevant info and a heart-warming tale on Ben Poole’s blog who had signed up for Naymz and received nothing but spam. Not a great advert you’d think but track down to the comments.

There’s the co-founder of Naymz responding personally to the criticism. Not some flunky but the big man himself. And the conversation continues. And continues and each time he answers the criticism openly and honestly and points to content on the site to help answer. And the question I’m asking, “I’m on Linked In, why do I need another business social network?” is helpfully answered. A great example of listening to the interweb conversations and actively particpating. Certainly put a positive slant on my view of Naymz.

But despite this, I’m also a little worried of social network overload what with Linked In, Facebook, Twitter, IM, my Google Reader (inbox zero achieved again today!), my blog, the research/inspiration emails I sign up to and not forgetting my work email, hotmail and gmail accounts. Do I need another? Will I ever get anything done? Can I be bothered to ask all my friends for the 3rd time to be my friend/part of my plans for world domination (er, sorry, professional network)? Or can I afford not to manage my online reputation and am I already seduced by the desire to want a big shiny “10″ on my page?

I’ll mull it over. Be interested to know your view.

What better way to promote the Body Shop Get Lippy campaign, which aims to reduce infection of HIV/AIDS through better awareness around the world, than protecting your poke on Facebook. Through buying a £5.00 lippy balm type thing, £2.80 (at least) goes to the fund. That’s a lot.

Disclosure time, the Protected Poke was created by headstream who I work with on a group basis. Be interested to know what you think. Or show you support and poke some friends. With protection of course.

More loft clearing to make way for bump later in the year, so more stuff to sell. Go on, have a nose, have a bid.

What do you think?

Computers, web n stuff. All geeky, spotty boys, right? Wrong. The girls have caught up and overtaken the boys, at least in the US. Read this article in NY Times for interesting insight and more nuggets like this (thanks to Mel Ferguson):

…among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).

Stats backed up by a recent eMarketer piece on more females than males online in US.

You probably also automatically think guys and gaming go together too but not so. In another show of support for the ladies, here’s a thought provoking post about how profanity and general insults have altered the “outsiders” perspective of gaming. There’s also a quite shocking video of someone gaming and basically sounding like he has Tourettes.

And is it any wonder the broad church of the advertising industry struggles to have senior females when repulsive opinions like the one in the image below are held. Very wrong. Full article here.

But that’s quite a miserable end to a post so let’s have some amusement by being wedgie-free from Hanes (via Daily Candy).

And if that wasn’t enough… I work with the no.1 (Kadri - on the right) and no. 3 (Katrina - on the left) hottest singles in the industry according to Revolution mag. Here they are (thanks to Katie White’s facebook).