Top 12 ideas from Toronto Boards-BDW Digital Workshop

Two weeks ago, I was in Toronto at the Berkeley Church Field House for Boulder Digital Works (BDW). Joined by 47 other people, I was going back to school for what was dubbed as a two-day intensive “Digital Bootcamp.” View photos from the event.

We first heard about Boulder Digital Works (BDW) from Kat Egan of Exopolis. Wiredrive strongly believes in supporting education and decided to sponsor the Digital Bootcamp series; and I was the lucky one who got to attend. What inspired us to support the event was the caliber of topics and instructors all working in the integrated interactive environment. It also helps that we are a technology company that is all about digital workflow!

Industry veterans lead the workshop

All the speakers were candid about their own agency’s structure and how they have adopted new ways of working within what was often termed as “the new media ecosystem.”

• Scott Prindle, Executive Creative Technical Director, Crispin, Porter and Bogusky
• Joe Corr, Associate Technical Director, Crispin, Porter and Bogusky
• Matt Howell, Chief Interactive Officer, Modernista!
• Kip Voytek, SVP of Communications and Experience Planning, Rapp Collins Worldwide

Key ideas from the workshop

1. An advertising agency with siloed departments will no longer work. Break down the walls and change the structure of the team.
2. Five is the magic number for a team.
3. You need a traditional copywriter, interactive creative, technologist, experience designer and a producer to create an integrated super power team.
4. Frequency = popularity. Content is still king, but you have to make sure that you update on a regular basis. Once you start, keep up the dialogue with the consumer and help them solve their problems.
5. Advertising isn’t about that one big idea anymore. Different platforms mean a whole bunch of multi-sized ideas. This is because messages have big ideas, but products usually don’t.
6. Whatever the Web is, so is your brand.
7. Creative and technology collaboration is essential and leads to better digital work. They shouldn’t work on separate sides of the office.
8. People use social media in different ways depending on their personality, so you need to account for each personality type.
9. The mobile device is becoming the remote control of our digital lives.
10. Use a different mobile strategy depending on the type of brand and the type of customers the brand appeals to.
11. Real time is right now. Check out Google in real time: www.oneriot.com.
12. Group exercises are fun. At the end of each day, we were divided into teams and assigned a brief using the concepts we learned. We then presented to the rest of the group for feedback.

Cheers,
Meg

About Boulder Digital Works

BDW embodies a new kind of digital learning environment. The educational program was developed by the University of Colorado, Boulder, with support from MDC Partners and input from Sweden’s Hyper Island and The Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA). The aim of BDW is to create digital leaders, while providing critical insight and strategic direction for the future of advertising.

Event photo gallery