The SPOKE Daily » Rachel Noonan

From Class to Crass; Final High/Lo lights from SXSW

Rachel Noonan — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:55:56 +0000

Music is coming to SXSW. It starts slowly; the hair gets longer, the button downs are now distressed vintage t’s, and the beards multiply. Before you know it the geekfest turns into a city wide rock concert. Bands are performing in every nook and cranny throughout the city. Music is spilling into the streets from all different directions. People are jumping on trucks, sleeping on the street and looking to do two things; drink and vibe. It was kind of weird thinking of nature vs nurture paired with the juxtaposition of the Interactive, Film and Music crowds. How people communicate and why. From a hyper tuned in group of over communicators to another group who communicate through instruments and song lyrics, it made me wonder who is getting their message across in the most effective way. Then I remembered interactive is about connecting and music is about feeling. We can’t really exist without both. Well, we could, but it would be a pretty boring. I know I will be swallowed soon by the rock locks and dirty bass lines. In an attempt to create some space in my brain I took a mental look back for my final SX highlights.. What were the awesome new discoveries? The inspiring talks? The newly created connections with the international “Futures Community” (I just made that up and will now create a wiki page for it)? Perhaps the next level bionic style partying that took place? Here are the top 10, in no particular order: HIGHLIGHTS Crowdtap Party. Good product. Good people. The most amazing chocolate fountain EVER. FROG Design. AWESOME. Joseph Kahn’s new Movie Detention. He did a bunch of Britney’s vids. Detention is a real-time pop culture satire time travel horror comedy. The script was crazy tight, the story was funny and the pop culture references were plentiful. Stylistically it felt like a series of single shots. The music video DNA is embedded in Kahn. He made no apologies for it in the Q&A. He does what he does and knows his audience. Talk with Pete Cashmore and David Crowley from Four Square. Crowley did some serious tap dancing around Cashmore’s pointed questions about selling foursquare. Chevy making life a little easier with 30 cars providing complimentary rides throughout the city. They also created the best photo experience I’ve ever seen in the history of photo experiences! Check it: http://social-gen.com/sxsw11/index-v.php?u=eC6. Checked out their new electric car, VOLT. It’s nice to see a “Dinosaur” surprise the scene with a product the future gen may actually like. Feel free to judge me on this, I don’t care. Mashable events. You could tell they cared and they worked really hard to make it fun. They were missing their actual content integrated into the activities, which was a bit of a bummer. GE’s Carosolar. A beautiful use of solar energy. A white on white old era carousel outfitted with slick neon lighting sat in a large parking lot inviting people to take a ride. Powered by solar energy, the carousel moves around and around, throwing people back to a time of fun and magic. Beyond the slick activation, this new solar technology seems to have legs. I’ve been trying to decide what to invest in. Something that’s part of today while constantly evolving to reflect new technologies, the environment and our constantly decreasing shared space. GE’s new solar technology is IT. Andrew WK talked. It was inspiring. I wish he was my big brother. Check out the venue Santos he opened with some friends in Manhattan. PARTY HARD. Artists you have to hear; Sheepdogs, Cold War Kids, Dikta from Iceland, The Kills, Kawarka, Malajube, Defences, Does it offend you, Yeah?, The Naked and the Famous, Phantogram In closing; SXSW Interactive was has the largest concentration of the most amazing thought leaders, trend setters and visionaries I have ever come across. SXSW Film was good, wish I had seen more. They need to separate film from Interactive. SXSW Music is dirty, loud and one of a kind. SPOKE will be back in 2012 ready to learn, play and connect. SIDE NOTE: For the ladies who are reading: Geeks are hotter than music dudes.

Noonan @ SXSW: Day 3

Rachel Noonan — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:30:34 +0000

All about engagement and Apps baby. The day started with Mashable’s Geek Games. Team #Tigerblood (me and crew) got ready to kick some smarter than thou butt in physical and metal challenges. The room was filled with fun energy of programmers, bloggers and Mashable enthusiast ready to compete for charity. Twister ended up being our maker with a 30 minute round ending with me and a girl from team #hashtag pulling some origami moves out. I broke the record setting game by setting my knee down. Hashtag FAIL. Needing a break from the twister olympics, we headed to a private taping a Comedy Death Ray. A few special guests met us on stage. Paul Rubens and Thomas Lennon for a fireside style chat. I learned Paul Rubens auditioned for SnL many moons ago, got beat out by Gilbert Godfrey, then decided he needed to get his Pee Wee character off the ground or else his career would stall. His loss on SnL was the worlds gain. How happy am I to have been raised in the Pee Wee generation. Sidenote: He is working on a movie with Judd Apatow..YES! Next we hit the Crowdtap Launch party. The promo girls almost turned us away with their Jersey Shore styling. We decided not to judge a book by it’s cover and headed in. A nice girl from their NYC agency took the time to fill us in on what Crowdtap is. Pretty awesome. They threw an amazing party with event photos being immediately twitpic’d with everyone’s @’s, a massive Chocolate Tap and mini corndogs. Before leaving they did an official presentation of their product against a massive screen. Quick, succinct and educational. Congrats Crowdtap on a killer launch. Onto the Milyoni fete. What is Milyoni you say, well (http://www.milyoni.com). Party was quiet, conservative and the same venue as Syncapse. Thanks for the taco. Onwards to the Mashable Party. #mashhouse closed the night out with shuffle board, pool and a great space for creatives to connect. I end todays words with General Electric. They have a white on white neon lit Solar Powered Carousel running during SXSW. It was a beautiful display of harnessing the suns power to make people smile late at night. Like a white horse running through a dark night, it reminded me that all the people at this festival will shape our future. The way we communicate, how efficiently we use our energy resources and how much we invest in the future. Based on who I’ve met so far, looks like the future is going to be amazing.

Noonan @ SXSW: Day 2

Rachel Noonan — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 21:51:47 +0000

I start today’s SXSW blog with a musical reference. Day two was like the Beth Ditto song ”I wrote the Book“. Fast paced, interpretive and tons of fun. Highlights include an interactive session on Visual Storytelling for the Deaf. It was interesting to see how beautifully animated people can be with sign language and the use of visuals to tell a story. They went through some examples of deaf people jokes, the benefits of being deaf and a really cool music video. Check this out (http://d-pan.org/index.php/this-is-d-pan/who-are). Amazing content. My only challenge with the session was ALL of the stories in every form were about deaf issues. It would have been nice to see a story about families, love or teenage issues in an everyday life setting. Onto film; Pen to Paper – Creating Conceptual Marketing Campaigns . Charlie Loft from All City from the UK lead the charge. It was awesome. The whole room worked together to make two movie posters for a thriller. A conceptual poster and one for the hollywood market. We talked about Black Swan and their campaign using both conceptual (link conceptual poster to: http://www.designworklife.com/2010/12/06/black-swan-posters/ ) and mass market creative. Someone in the audience said ” we never saw the conceptual art in the US, I guess it’s because the UK is perceived as a more intelligent audience”. Wow, I wonder why that may be? Watching Loft go through his creative process was fun, unfortunately random people kept killing the flow with really junior league questions. Come on guys, ask those questions on blogs where you can be both lame and anonymous. Next: Keynote. SCVNGR inventor Seth Priebatsch (http://www.scvngr.com/about/team). He talked about how the foundations of gaming can rule the world. Think Groupon, Fab Find, Foursquare, etc. Using time mechanics, group participation. He is on point and quite entertaining with his ever present and unnecessary Oakley Glasses and cartoon like shiny face. Did I mention he is 21 and raised the first million in capital for SCVNGR on his own. Insane. Next was a little comedy repose. I”m not making this up. We saw Dave Foley, Kevin Pollack, Michael Ian Black, Howard Kramer and Brett Gelman all on one stage. INSANE and amazing. Geek jokes were flying! Ok, now party time. We hit a record number of parties, but will only mention two because they ruled. FROG DESIGN hit it out of the park…..OUT OF THE PARK and Syncapse took SXSW party sophistication to a new level with a killer photo booth, custom branded everything and an amazing drink menu. My eyes were bleeding by Syncapse, so I crawled home to grab a few hours before going back into the fray.

Noonan @ SXSW: Day 1

Rachel Noonan — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 18:44:13 +0000

Got my pass, ticket and party invite ducks in a row and headed to my first panel, Marketing Budgets have gone social- Is it Working? FULL. I head to the next one called Slaying the Four Horseman of the Social-Media Apocalypse. The former social guy from CITIgroup was talking about legal and how to “manage” the conversation and other social challenges. It made me realize a lot of companies are further behind than I thought. One guy asked about how are “we” going to set up ways to respond to the conversation. Really? I wanted to make reference to a client tweet issue we had that was addressed in record time, but I kept my mouth shut. Why would I give the competition intel? Or why wouldn’t I. He clearly doesn’t have a handle on the process, so my words aren’t going to magically educate him on social response process right? Dicussion done and we depart to parties, to blog to meet awesome people. After freshening up, we head into the mix for some social mingling. The Austin Museum of Digital Art threw a pretty decent fete with some homegrown Canadian talent , Alan Majer of Goodrobot showing his wares . A really cool Digital Dj battle kept people movin through the night and well into the AM. As the night was winding down, I could see the next day emerge in my mind. New panels, new people and now learnings awaited. To quote Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s,”It’s a madhouse”. Walking down 6th with a few new friends that’s all I could say over and over. From registration to sponsor activations to mardi grad style parties, there were people, tablets. phones and business cards flying everywhere. An awesome first day madhouse experience on the first day of SXSW.

FLIGHT CENTRE LOOKING FOR SOCIAL MEDIA SPECIALIST

Rachel Noonan — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 21:20:35 +0000

LOOKING FOR YOUR FUTURE IN SOCIAL MEDIA http://flightcentre.com/careers. Give 5 social links and 140 characters or less why you’re awesome. Check out FC’s Twitter @flight_centre

SPOKE is attending TEDx Toronto

Rachel Noonan — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:16:50 +0000

SPOKE has been selected as a delegate for TEDx Toronto this Thursday, September 30th. We are excited to see how the organizers do at representing the TED banner in TO. We have collectively spent weeks on TED.com soaking up the amazing speaker talks that make us think about the way we live, love and learn in our new world. TED has been put on a pedestal by freaks, geeks and awesome people around the World. Let’s see if Thursday’s installment will have delegates blogging, tweeting and Facebooking from dawn to dusk. Hourly reports will come via SPOKE Daily. http://tedxtoronto.com/

THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Rachel Noonan — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:58:00 +0000

From director David Fincher and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin comes The Social Network, a film that proves you don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies. The film is produced by Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca, and Ceán Chaffin and based on the book “The Accidental Billionaires” by Ben Mezrich.

SPOKE @ TIFF

Rachel Noonan — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 23:46:46 +0000

Collectively, the SPOKE team drank 15 Bottles of vodka, 6 bottles of wine, saw 13 movies, attended 18 parties and tried to get in as much trouble as possible. We went highbrow with Toro Magazine’s Preview Exhibition of the New York Times CANADIAN PHOTO ARCHIVE, and lowbrow with some beer shot-gunning and head banging at the World Premiere of FUBAR II. As TIFF continues to grow bigger each year, it gets harder and harder to decide which films are “must see’s”, which parties are worth the time and how far you can roll with the least amount of sleep possible. SPOKE took the time to navigate TIFF and bring back a few tidbits for you. Listed below are nine movie, party and fest mentions that surprised, entertained, disgusted or amazed us over the 10 day TIFF Toronto takeover. 1. TIFF Insider info: If you see a Film Premiere party advertised like this: “ X ACTOR” WILL BE IN ATTENDANCE TO CELEBRATE THE PREMIERE OF HIS/HER FILM. $40 AT THE DOOR, BOTTLE SERVICE MANDATORY.” The party will be lame. Some promoter paid an appearance fee which could have your hot actor of the moment pass by the club for a hot second to shake a few hands and then head out to the real party where YOU will not be invited. 2. It’s all about the movies. Do NOT attend film parties celebrating a film premiere unless you HAVE seen the movie. It’s bad form and you could get caught looking lame if someone asks you a question like “What did you think of the protagonists fall from grace”. Potentially EPIC Fail! 3. Keanu Reeves is super hot in person. We have seen our share of “The Beautiful people” at SPOKE. Over the course of the festival we saw Clive Owen, Ryan Reynolds, Kelly Preston, Kevin Spacey, Abagail Breslin and more. None of them were as much of a surprise as our own Canadian cutie turned dark Matrix Warrior Keanu. 4. MONSTERS is a movie you should see. Done with no script, very little money and a traveling production team, MONSTERS set out to be the most realistic monster movie ever made. It was sweet and you need to watch it. 5. The King’s Speech is a movie you should see. King’s Speech tells the story of the man who became King George VI (Colin Firth), the father of Queen Elizabeth II. After his brother abdicates, George (’Bertie’) reluctantly assumes the throne. Plagued by a dreaded stutter and considered unfit to be king, Bertie enlists the help of an unorthodox speech therapist, Lionel Logue. Sounds a little dry right? WRONG. Stripped down, it’s a story about a guy who had a brutal father and no support or outlet for his frustrations. All his issues manifest themselves in the form of a stutter and the most insane cultural pressures prevent Bertie from getting to the real issues. In comes Lionel (Jeffrey Rush). Lionel doesn’t give a hoot about Kings and Queens and all that “Royal” stuffiness. He shakes things up, inspires you, and leaves you with a warm heart. 6. FUBAR II: Get drunk and go see it. “Knowledge of non-knowledge is power” 7. THE TOWN: Will be reviewed as one of the best movies in years. Haven’t seen such amazing car chase scenes since HEAT. 8. If you really want to experience TIFF, do a combo of pre-purchase and RUSH lines. There is something special about the anticipation of being a lucky RUSH line winner to a premiere you never could have purchased a ticket. 9. Don’t be a stalkarazzi. It’s lame.

NEVER SAY NO TO PANDA

Rachel Noonan — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:10:39 +0000

A DOC WITH HEART, TEENAGE PAPARAZZO

Rachel Noonan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:00:05 +0000

Yet again, Torontonians were spoiled with another exclusive, and SPOKE was there. An intimate advanced screening of Adrian Grenier’s documentary, Teenage Paparazzo. SYNOPSIS When precocious 13-year-old paparazzo Austin Visschedyk snapped a photo of celebrity Adrian Grenier (HBO’s Entourage), little did he know his life was about to change. Turning the tables on the juvenile paparazzo, Grenier stepped to the other side of the lens in an attempt to mentor a teenager obsessed with the lure of the Hollywood lifestyle. Grenier develops a meaningful relationship with his camera-clicking young friend as he attempts to reconcile their mutual exploitation. Indeed, Grenier puts himself on the line here, trying to make sense of his own recently acquired fame. Post screening, a poorly managed Q&A session (Get a mic people) took place where Adrian and the host bantered back and forth about Plato, the contrast between Old and New Hollywood and how many times the host could call Adrian “Vince”. Some good questions were asked about the social commentary of the story and why society has this hyper obsession with celebrity. Much to my surprise, Adrian was reflective, articulate and very mild mannered. It became clear his intention with this documentary was not to exploit Austin, but to put a lens inward to the core of the industries intent. Why do we care about people we don’t know? Why do we want them built up and broken down? Why have we decided to idolize only a few, putting the common folk into a sort of “Peasant” like status? Paparazzo does not attempt to take a position about whether societies collective confidence is decreasing due to “us” creating unrealistic personal expectations set against these “god like” creatures. It doesn’t try to paint the “shooters” in a particular light or make excuses for celebrities. Paparazzo just asks questions. It was actually one of the most unbiased documentaries I have seen in a while. I am sure considering the intense nature of the subject, it was tough to keep it clean and not veer in one particular direction. It’s really cool that a “celebrity” is taking the time to look at the world we put on a pedestal. It’s the don’t bite the hand that feeds you thing. Nobody wants to put a microscope on it, especially when they are in it. With Adrian, he’s not just in it, but represents the epitome of it with his character “Vince” in Entourage. It was brave for him and his supporters to make this documentary. Well worth watching. I am going to go ahead and put this out there; I think Adrian Grenier’s calling may be behind the camera.