Marcel Reichart Blog

Sevenload 3.0

Congratulations to Ibo & the Sevenload developpers for the relaunch of the sevenload platform!
Hard work and long nights (see pics on Ibo's blog) for a great outcome.

ZDF: cash cow or public value?

Cash Cow or Public Value? This title German public TV network ZDF has put to its annual forum on television  which is held in 41st year today. This responds to the intense debate on the quality of television and the digital strategy of the publicly financed networks. Christiane zu Salm will give a keynote this morning and I'll stay during the day. See the program and speakers here. Also there is a live stream on the ZDF owned mediathek.

MIND: Paula's and Adam's 21century salon

Paula Antonelli and Adam Bly host this true 21century salon MIND next week in NYC, just look through the presenters and topics (e.g. science of scent), exciting.

New York's Piazza

Here a rendering of a new quarter planned in New York by Tishman & Speyer. Some Italien flair of a piazza. Another example of the ongoing city redesign taking place in this decade.

via Spiegel Online with more photos.

Swiss Dark Fair

If you are in NYC these days, have a look at the Swiss Institute for Contemporary Arts with its exhibition Dark Fair.... I liked the visual, doesn't it look good? Via Marina of Karma International.

Chanel's art bag

Art, style, architecture and mobility seem to merge with Chanel's Mobile Art Container travelling around major capitals this year. To start with Hong Kong where it landed like a spaceship. Design by Zaha Hadid and commissioned by Karl Lagerfeld a definite 21century installation creating an immersive brand experience of its bag line and using the city as staging ground. The normadid character to me is expressing the mobility of a global society and creates a time exclusivity. And the iconic images are framed by the media reporting in their arts & style sections or blogs like this.

By chance, we met curator Fabrice Bousteau in a Paris café last week, he has selected the group artists showing their contemporary works. More photos via the cool hunter.

Rafael's Pieces

We met Rafael Rozendaal this week in Paris. He is a brasilian-dutch digital artist whose work I became an instant fan. Actually, it was our dear friend Miltos Manetas who showed some of Rafaels interactive pieces at DLD and as part of his NEEN project. Just click through the site, if possible watch the works with a beamer. My favorites are I am very sorry and jellotime. The New Museum in New York will show the latter soon. Rafael told me that his idea is to represent his life through his art living in the internet. I think reflects very much on how the web becomes our representation of reality.

Mirko's Design

If you wish to educate yourself on the highstyle of editorial design, just go to Mirko Borsche's new website. There the acclaimed designer living in Munich shows an extensive archive of his works, from newspaper (ZEIT), magazine (SZ, Neon), advertising (Mini) to books and shop design (Nike). Great site, great work, great master.

Foggy Dubai

I just arrived in foggy Dubai town after a short nightflight. Actually I meet DLD friends on the plane who were about to dive into their Easter holidays. Now the air is getting clearer. My first impression is the airport which is very modern, huge and a tremendous shopping mall. There is a sign "Welcome to tomorrow - Dubai" and I learnd that the capacity will be enlarged to 75 mio. passengers soon. People from all over are here, also many Indians. Getting into town, I pass skyscrapers and hotels (see here the Jumeirah and the iconic Burj-al Arab). In the hotel I log on, broadband works well. Twitter.com and flickr.com are blocked, facebook works btw.

Munich Munich!

Again, Munich has been named most liveable city. Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung conveyed a survey on German cities where the creative class would like to live. Here!

super normads

Philippe Starck could be called a super normad. Well perhaps he would see himself this way. When I read about his lifestyle this weekend in ParisMatch, I thought so. He tells there how he permanently travels around the globe for his projects, the Baccarat in Moscow, the Le Lan in Bejing or designing a new eco-friendly and almost invisible superjacht. And he keeps his energies by creating a personal cocoon with his wife around himself during all this jetset, the keep rituals, doesn't take baggage. Interesting.

I thought of others who keep their average speed at these levels. Our DLD friend Hans-Ulrich Obrist for example who takes his inspiration around the world connecting artists, exhibitions and people. Josua Ramo wrote about the average speed, the miles you travel divided by the hours in a year. Hans-Ulrich will be in Dubai next week, too. Looking forward. I spoke with Steffi today about super normads who are the first global citizens.

Luxury selfemployed

It has been written about this a lot already. The new generation is more and more at ease being selfemployed. We remember Sascha Lobo's and Holm Friebe's "Wir nennen es Arbeit". This week, I have been thinking about this trend again. I had a talk with two magazine editors who described selfemployment as the new luxury of their well-educated twen readers, letting them chose their city to live and work times. And I met two others who just left their permanent jobs to become their own chief and work for a small number of clients. While this has been a long tradition in the creative industry, however there seemed some coincidence here towards a change in urban lifestyle enabled by better communication, i.e. the internet, and lower transport cost. And this goes alongside the massive downsizing in traditional industries and resulting social tensions.

For Dubai

Next weekend, I will head to Dubai in the week of Art Dubai and wonder what else shouldn't I miss going there? For sure, the architecture will be amazing, here a pic of the site of Burj-Tower. Actually, Rem Koolhaas is about to speak at Art Dubai on cultural cities.

Lead Awards

Last night large parts of the German creative and media scene gathered at Hamburg Deichtorhallen for the Lead Awards. The 19 prizes given range from best photography, websites, print campaigns and magazine editorial and design and besides Spiegel won sponsors like Google, Boss and ENBW. I met many peers from media and design. Here my picks from the award winners:

Stefan Sagmeister, design maverick living in New York and a DLDster, for his „Things I learned in life series“. He is just now opening an exhibition in Deitch Projects gallery in New York. Heads up!

In the photography section, also Taryn Simon, also DLD speaker, was nominated.

 

Berlin contemporary culture magazin 032c biannually published by Jürgen Koch won a gold medal.

 

SZ-Magazin for its cover story on an aging society. Dominik Wichmann’s mag was nominated in several categories.

 

The Lead Awards also cover online media: Facebook took the latter, eco-lifestyle platform Utopia was named best community and collective contemporary history site EinesTages won the web-magazine prize. My favorite here the best blog Slanted which dedicates to typos. I found that the visual and context quality of all web formats has increased significantly. Not only image quality, also the rich context of image, link, text and video.

 

BMW won an award with its Einser campaign, a play in typos by creative agency MAB. Words you would associate with driving a beamer have been condensed in letters and so express the dynamic density of the car.

 

And Luis Vitton won a title for its Gorbatschow campaign. I like this motive, now I saw Keith Richard is also a testimonial. Luis Vitton gives a subtle statement of globality, celebrity and style here.

Atlantic-Online

Political think tanks have a tradition in the US, less so in Germany. Jan-Friedrich Kallmorgen and Johannes Bohnen thought to change this and created Atlantic-Online, a Berlin-based think tank addressing international politics, translantic relations, but also new fields such as climate and technology issues, demographics and  financial markets.  Both have build their knowhow in distinguished previous experiences. Jan-Friedrich I knew for some time, when we first met at a summer workshop of Atlantik-Brücke in Schloss Hardenberg. 

Atlantic-Online sticks to its name and disseminates its insights online platform and a newsletter called global must reads (sent out to 15.000 people). Also they develop an online community called Atlantic-Community,  just met both founders in Berlin and wanted to share this interesting new institution with you.

Peter's Nobel Faces

When I was for lunch in Einstein Cafe unter den Linden in Berlin yesterday, by chance I met Peter Badge, a befriended photographer and DLDster. Peter has worked over the last years with the Nobel Committee on a fascinating project. He had the assignement to portrait all living nobel laureates in the world. This made him travel substantially, but even more meet these geniuses which constitute a community of excellence of their own. I got to know Peter through Till of Cicero Magazin which presented some of Peter's portraits (which Nobel Laureate is on the photo, any guess?)

Peter published a photobook on these encounters and was so kind to invite me to the Opening of his exhibition "Nobel Faces" at the MadaTech Campus in Haifa on March 18.

No Tipping Point

Just got back from Berlin on a quite windy flight on which I read an article by Clive Thomson in Fast Company negating the tipping point paradigm brought to public by Malcolm Gladwell a few years ago. In his bestseller he laid the basis for viral marketing and reaching out for influentials who would set trends which then disseminate. In contrast Duncan Watts, a Yahoo-sponsored researcher shows that trends actually are not made by influencers. Watts argues that societies are much to complex as that a small group of influencers could amplify them and he builds computer models to prove.

Yet trends emerge if the public is susceptible to the "virus" or the product as you will. Very interesting and it reminds me of a conversation I had with a immunologist lately on how viruses spread. He told me that it depends very much on whether the organism is again "susceptible". I think this can also be oberved in public opinion. If there is a certain Stimmung, news have more impact than others.

Watts conclusion for marketing btw is that the best impact is achieved by combining traditional mass marketing - reach out as many consumer as you can - with instruments that let consumers drive a trends further e.g. by sending a product-related piece to their friends. What do you think about this theory? Do you know a successful campaign that combines these features?

FIPP VDZ Digital

An early flight this morning to Berlin and I just arrived at the FIPP VDZ Digital Magazine Media Conference in Berlin. In the second year, international publishers meet here to exchange on how to succeed in the internet. Dr. Burda made opening remarks adressing a number of questions for the industry: how to leverage the brands online and build communities, how to enter the video space, how to develop new digital products and how to collaborate online.

Just now, Patrick McGovern, Founder and CEO of IDG Group, is holding his key note. Whow. Just saying that he is for 50 years in the publishing business, he presents IDG's impressive digital strategy. Already, the company has higher revenues online than in its traditional print operations, and profit margins have increased. I was said the presentation will be on the conference website (good design btw) later and I can only recommend to read this. It shows how IDG associates its brands with social networks and video platforms. He stresses the potential of mobile citing Eric Schmidt of Google seeing in mobile the recreation of the internet. McGovern is also behind a large brain research center located in Boston.

The conference has a drawn attendees from many countries, there is strong Japanes delegation. I will be on a panel this afternoon "Creating and utilising communities on the web".   

DLD at Plaza

We had the privilege to host a DLD cocktail at the soon to be opened Plaza Hotel in New York last week. Pictures will follow soon. The famous hotel is so much part of Big Apple's history, placed iconically at Central Park South and Fifth Avenue. Nowadays, the Apple Store is just opposite and we went there by night. It shimmeres a little like a graal and you step down to immerse into the Apple world.

Our reception went alongside the US Israeli Executive Summit held there for two days which we could also attend. Our Co-Chair Yossi Vardi held a panel on digital media and Guy Rolnik with The Marker was a media partner.

We were so happy that our cocktail drew so many old and new DLD friends, amongst them architect Richard Meyer, Martha Stewart, Andrew Robertson fo BBDO, Klaus Biesenbach and Paula Antonelli of Moma, Matthew Bishop of the Economist, Adam Bly of Seed Media and many more. A hot topic was Paula's newly opened exhibit "Design and the elastic mind", a must see (here NYtimes coverage with photos) showing the wide range of design today.

Absolut Music

This week in New York, I went to an event by Absolut Vodka which featured an "absolut machine". This was an installation by two MIT robotics researchers who build a music automat which composed sound based on people's collective code. I liked the title smile machine, because one had to smile seeing the 3x5 meters array of whine glases touched by robot fingers and small balls projected on wood tabs.

Actually, Absolut Vodka placed an ad on this machine in the current Monocle Magazin. Very absolut