Ged Carroll

Category: out and about | 事件 | 종목 | 催し物

I have been fortunate to be living in London and Hong Kong since I have been written this blog. This has given me many opportunities to get out and about.

In this section you will find a wide range of posts:

  • Conferences – for a wider range of things. There was a time when blogging and social media had a range of conferences and events, thought these have declined as they always said the same thing and the same problems were continually highlighted.
  • Exhibitions – from traditional and popular Asian culture, to design, art and history. For a city that has been accused of having no art scene beyond auction houses it was easy for me to go out and about to see something
  • Festivals – usually food or film festivals. I am a big fan of a number of genres: science fiction, world cinema, crime and spy films. Sci-Fi London has been my favourite film festival for the past two decades. It helps that it has been hosted down the road from where I lived
  • Gigs – I usually went to music gigs as I have never really been a fan of comedy. In particular, I loved going to the Brixton academy or the 100 Club. One of my friends who is longer with us, used to come with me an annual basis to see a gig or two.
  • Museums – colonial history graced the UK with the money to build museums and the stuff to put inside them. On its own one of London’s main museums would be enough to make a city. Together Londoners are spoiled

  • My 10 most popular (trafficked) blog posts of 2015

    These are the ten most trafficked posts of 2015, in reverse order:

    Throwback gadget: Nokia N900 – I tried Nokia’s first Maemo-based phone. It was amazing how useless it was as one forgets how linked the modern smartphone is to web services. Despite these problems one could see the now lost potential of the phone. More on the Nokia N900 at GSMarena.

    Generational user experience effects – a meditation on user experience from the analogue era to the present

    2015: just where is it all going? – I had a think about where digital and technology would go over the next 12 months or so. You can see how I did here.

    Reflecting on Yahoo!’s Q2 2015 progress report on product prioritisation – by June this year, the product rationalisation that Yahoo! underwent provided ample opportunity to show that it’s core offering was collapsing in many international markets. Rather than it being a market wide condition, the data pointed to Yahoo! specific issues.

    Traackr – beyond the buzzword event – a post about how a diverse range of organisations from Coca-Cola to a luxury jeweller were thinking about influencer marketing.

    Throwback gadget: Made 2 Fade (by KAM) GM-25 Mk II phono pre-amp and mixer – a review of a mixer that has been lost in dance music culture history, yet was responsible for much of its popularity outside the super clubs.

    That Jeremy Clarkson post (or lies, damn lies and sentiment analysis) – or why everyone from the mainstream media to PR Week got the story so wrong about Jeremy Clarkson’s departure from Top Gear.

    An experiment on fake Twitter followers – I spent some of my hard-earned cash to see what difference if any buying fake followers had. I chose Twitter as a channel mainly because it would be easier to measure any impact, otherwise it could have just as easily been Facebook followers, Pinterest subscribers or Instagram followers. My overall conclusion on the fake follower business is that it almost purely about personal vanity rather than gaming a system.

    O2O (online to offline) or what we can learn from the Chinese – East Asia is way ahead of marketers in the west in terms of multi-channel marketing particularly the integration of of online with offline aspects.

    48 hours with the Apple Watch – hands down the most popular post of this year on my blog was my short experience living with the Apple Watch. I felt that it was a nicely designed, but un-Apple experience. It also convinced me that the use case for wearables wasn’t here yet.

    That’s the end of my posts of 2015.

  • On the sofa: No blood no tears

    No blood No tears – One of the best kept secrets in London is the free sessions put on by the Korean Cultural Centre just off Trafalgar Square. I caught the last film of the year to be shown at the centre. No blood No tears is a Korean heist story. Gyung-Sun is a former safe-cracker who has reformed and become a taxi driver.

    Her husband is in the wind and left behind a lot of gambling debts that local loan sharks try to collect on. She doesn’t know where her child is and to cap it all Gyung-Sun has a difficult relationship with the police and her short temper.

    A chance car accident brings her into contact with a petty gangsters moll and a plot ensues to rob the dog fighting arena where illegal gambling takes place. What ensues is a film that is part comedy, part Thelma & Louise and a healthy dose of ultra-violence that would be familiar to Hong Kong cinema and Tarantino fans.

    Over the next few weeks I will be getting my fix of Korean cinema at the London Korean Film Festival. I can recommend from personal experience:

    • Raging Currents
    • The Man From Nowhere
    • The Classified File

    More Korea-related posts here.

  • Louis Vuitton Series 3 exhibition, 180 Strand, London

    Having been involved in a number of events over the past couple of years where creative digital work intersected with experiential marketing I was keen to look at Louis Vuitton Series 3 exhibition before it closed.

    Burberry tends to get the plaudits for digital experiences in the luxury sector and they do a lot of interesting work. Louis Vuitton’s initiatives like an online service that allows ladies to personalise their bag a la Nike ID.

    I found it interesting that Louis Vuitton’s approach seems to have been guided by exclusivity not being the same as accessibility. There was a wealth of helpful staff, you were positively encouraged to take your own pictures – again unusual for a luxury brand, many prefer to give you content that upholds their standards.

    A few touches that I really liked at the Louis Vuitton Series 3 exhibition

    #LVSeries3 Louis Vuitton Series 3 exhibition, 180 Strand, LondonLV logo motion graphics at the start of the exhibition, no real surprise right? What the designers did was remove the polarisers from the LCD screens so that the screens are apparently blank. The polariser is laid out in vertical strips at different distances and widths from the screen. This gives a kind of lenticular effect when you walk past it. This modern logo morphs through matrix-like digital noise and on to the more traditional LV design.
    #LVSeries3 Louis Vuitton Series 3 exhibition, 180 Strand, London
    It seems absurdly simple, but the idea of using projecting mapping techniques on a flat LED screen to emphasise how Louis Vuitton products are cut from a common material before being assembled was clever. Just because you have projection mapping technology at your finger tips means that one often looks for complex shapes like building fronts rather than a flat panel.
    #LVSeries3 Louis Vuitton Series 3 exhibition, 180 Strand, London
    The glass bins got the balance right between protecting the product so that it doesn’t look grubby from being over-handled, whilst still making it accessible and tactile rather than a museum experience.

  • MWC 2015 from the Sidelines: Day One

    In covering MWC 2015 yesterday I talked about the pre-event Sunday consumer product launches. These launches continued into Monday with Microsoft revealing more about Windows 10 alongside some mid-range smartphones. Sony’s press event was notable for both its style and content. Sony took a lower key approach to the show than in previous years. It hinted in interviews that this was part of a wider strategy by the company to shift Sony’s launch calendar, from being around the latest processor updates, to leading with consumer experience improvements.
    mwc day 1
    Looking at the online conversation around MWC on Monday, it unsurprisingly dominated by consumer devices. In particular hardware specifications of the devices, which shows just how much of a mountain Sony will have to climb in trying to change the event narrative away from device ‘speeds and feeds’.

    Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote at the event looked to downplay the role of internet.org rolling web access out in the developing world. In the reality his keynote was on the fault line of a chasm between telecoms providers and internet (or ‘over-the-top web’ to use Deutsche Telekom’s parlance) companies such as Google and Facebook.

    Messaging stripping away traffic from SMS, Project Loon and Internet.org have all been factors of concern. Google’s announcement that it planned to become a wireless carrier through a global set of MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) agreements hasn’t helped either. César Alierto, chief executive officer of Telefonica talked of moving the debate from net neutrality to a wider digital neutrality in order to create a level playing field for both carriers and internet companies.

    This divide between carriers and internet companies has been characterised by Bloomberg as part of a larger US/European digital divide, with large US companies having a greater market capital that they can use to buy up European rivals and push through developments in the face of carrier resistance.

    Another gap between the US and Europe was the continued importance of digital privacy at the show. Silent Circle rolled out a more polished version of the GeeksPhone-based Blackphone and a tablet companion. Finnish security company F-Secure promoted its Freedome VPN as a way of dealing with PRISM-style internet data collection.  Finnish mobile operating system company Jolla announced SailfishSecure in association with SSH Communications Security.

    Digital privacy wasn’t only a business opportunity for gadget makers, but also of concern to telco CEOs, who where concerned that a lack of consumer confidence in privacy would adversely affect business. Vodafone, Telenor, Deutsche Telekom and Telefonica all called for policy makers to provide stronger safeguards for citizens data privacy and digital security. This wasn’t solely altruistic as carriers saw a potential role to play in helping consumers securely manage their digital identity. How realistic that might be after the Gemalto data breach remains to be seen.

    Finally, the news that caused most confusion in Racepoint’s European HQ was that Ford showcase prototype MoDe electric bikes at their MWC press conference – I know we don’t get it either.

    More information
    Rory Cellan-Jones interviews Sony on whether it should walk away from mobile (BBC)
    Why Sony didn’t announce the Xperia Z4 smartphone at MWC | The Inquirer
    MWC 2015: Google Announces Wireless Carrier Plans By Becoming A ‘Mobile Virtual Network Operator’ | TechTimes
    Telcos Demand ‘Digital Neutrality’ | EETimes
    Zuckerberg in Barcelona highlights widening US-Europe gap | Bloomberg
    Security and Microsoft take center stage as Mobile World Congress 2015 opens | CNet
    Telco CEOs see urgent need for privacy, data security | TotalTelecom
    Mikko Hypponen To Talk Privacy At The Mobile World Congress | F-secure
    Ford unveils ‘MoDe’ electric bike prototypes at MWC 2015 | CNet

  • Dreadzone at Under The Bridge, Stamford Bridge

    It has become a tradition that my friend Simon and I meet up to catch Dreadzone on their annual tour last Friday. Simon had come in from Saudi Arabia so its a pretty big deal for us. This was the first time I had been to a gig at Under The Bridge. The space is a purpose-built live venue under the stadium where Chelsea play.
    Dreadzone at Under The Bridge, Stamford Bridge

    It is the most comfortable venue that I have been to. Molton Brown products in the toilet, spotless facilities, comfortable seats and a stand-up area in front of the stage. There are screens all around the venue to allow you to follow the gig and a great sound system.

    Dreadzone put on a great gig, lower energy then previous gigs I had seen them at, but still a great performance. The location of the venue brought out a really mixed audience. Friends and family of the band, long-time Dreadzone fans, middle class professionals with fading celtic tattoos, elderly punks and older mods. I suspect that there were some locals as well, nice young things who looked rah.

    The gig seemed to be supporting the reissue of Dreadzone’s album Sound, which is due to be repressed on vinyl. It is interesting that Sound isn’t snared up with a record label. I presume that the band own the masters and are consequently in control of their own releases. Sound was released in 2001, six years after their breakthrough album Second Light. It is designed more as a record to be taken as its whole, rather than a series of more accessible songs. Different genres flow through the album and it works as a live playlist. Although they did make sure to put in some crowd pleasers as well. More events here.