Contemplating Interesting08

A few years back Russell Davies blogged about being interesting, if you never read the original post or have not read it recently then click thru and get acquainted, its good stuff.

"The way to be interesting is to be interested. You’ve got to find what’s interesting in everything, you’ve got to be good at noticing things, you’ve got to be good at listening. If you find people (and things) interesting, they’ll find you interesting."

Jeremy Bullmore once said to me that the best Planners were people who found something genuinely interesting in every single section of the Sunday papers.It doesn't matter if you have no car and have no interest in Cars & Motoring for example, take a look and surprise yourself by what you find. It all comes from the same essential premise that interesting people are interested in the world around them, not just the advertising world, the world world.

Russell's annual conference of Interesting which took place in London on 22nd was totally Ronsealin a brilliant way! Although I had nothing to do with it, it actually made me feel very proud of the community that Russell and his blogs have helped to facilitate. The fact that hundreds of people gave up their precious Saturday to go and listen to bizarre, brilliant but above all interesting people taking about stuff that they felt passionately about was oddly life/career-affirming.

There was so much that I enjoyed, even the speakers who just went over my head were still interesting. As soon as the links to the video are posted I will share them, but worth checking over at Russell's blog this week.

So 24 hours on, what are the things that have stayed fresh in my mind?

I loved the old school turntable zoetrope

I loved the talk about vacuum cleaners and RHOPOGRAPHY - the study of the trivial and overlooked.

I loved the talk on Creative Generalists and realized that is probably what I am!

The talk on booze and creativity was fascinating - gin being the enabling technology of the 18th century was a good thought...

F's fav was the guy who talked/played a presentation about the intersection of guitar music and album art and design.

(I have hunted on YouTube to see if people have uploaded footage, but no luck - BTW, how badly does the search functionality on YouTube suck!!!)

So many Hellos needed, it really seemed like all the great and the good of advertising etc were there - The Divine Miss N, Almost Always Thinking, Blackbeltjones, Johnny Vulkan, Mark Earls, Beeker, Paul Colman, Antony Goh, Yusuf, Will, Tom, John, Asi, Jeremy, Grad In The City, Anjali, Ruby Pseudo....lovely to see you all!! I think that Beersphere needs to get started again...

And almost forgot, the gorgeous-sounding handmade scotch eggs from Andrew at C4

Comments

[Natasja]

Lovely meeting you too! And glad you had a good time. Definitely up for drinks soon.

[John]

Nice to wave at you. Reviving the sphere would be a very good idea.

[Wal]

Missed to say hello as I've been reading your blog for so long :) Next time!

[Will]

Nice to see you Amelia. It was a great day out.

[Asi]

Indeed, nice to see you all.

let the beersphere resume!

best

A.

[Matt]

I'm filed under "Advertising etc"??! ARGH!

[Matt]

I'm filed under "Advertising etc"??! ARGH!

[Dino]

I really should stop whining about missing it. But reading posts like this doesn't help!

[Faris]

sigh. sounds fun.

beersphere is coming back. let's sort that out.