The 4A's Creative Technologies participating at AppNation NYC!

May 15-16 during InternetWeek NYC!

Visit the 4A's APPLab

Come to the panel discussion on the new breed of creative in advertising, the Creative Technologist (March 16, 3:40PM)

AppNationNYC Website

Join Chick Foxgrover, CTO of the American Association of Advertising Agencies (The 4A's) and a cutting-edge group of creative technologists as they discuss what new skills are required of the next generation of creative directors as we move farther beyond the world of "three screens" and as knowledge of the technical capabilities and limitations of emerging communications and advertising platforms become increasingly essential. 

• Moderator: Chick Foxgrover, CTO, The 4A's
• Bernard Briggs, CTO, T3
• Jordan Berkowitz, Executive Director, Creative Technology & Innovation, Ogilvy
• Angela Wei, Chief Digital Officer, Arnold Worldwide

From Cannes: Digital Integration

"beyond droning declarations about digital to practical concerns..."

Echoing themes from our own CreateTech conference, this article about Cannes supplies more evidence of the the integration of technologists and technology into agencies and the best marketing work. 

What Digital Integration Means at Cannes

Update on Sunday, July 10, 2011 at 6:56PM by createtech_admin

And more posts about CreateTech at Cannes, here from Mel Exon from BBH Labs, London.

"I suspect 2011’s festival may be looked back upon as the year advertising and technology agreed to meet in Cannes..."

Tech & Adland, Together – A Perspective on Cannes 2011

"Simply put, technology is creative."

John Mayo-Smith from R/GA writes today in AdAge (Why Agencies, Talent Should Seize the Space Between Creativity and Technology) about the aspiration of many agencies as they approach the development of creative technologies in their organizations. A "seamless cultural continuity ... more important than wearing technical capabilities on agency shirtsleeves."

A laudable goal, and while working on the programming for CreateTech and messaging for our activities we've heard the argument for NOT pointing to any particular skill domain as needing special attention or titles, instead focusing on the client's marketing needs and the agency's overall value offering.

But we are still not completely there, on the agency or the client side of the business, as the timeliness of this article attests. And as careers and agency offerings develop, as new business pitches get written, we'll see more debate on the how we articulate what we do and who we are as agency technologists. And as business leaders we know that how we manage these changes is not self-evident.

Our view is that technologists working in creative industries of all kinds DO have particular issues and interests that overlap but are not always covered by other corporate or engineering practitioners or by conversations centered on more traditional crafts. And that there is a need for a community to surface and discuss them. And until "things just work" we'll have to study and talk about them.

And of course, we agree. "Simply put, technology is creative." ;)

Another great CreateTech roundup from colleagues at RP3

"It was fascinating to meet other leaders in the industry who are all thinking about the intersection of creative advertising, marketing and PR and the exponentially expanding digital opportunities available to us." 

We couldn't have expressed our goals better! Read the whole thing at:
http://blog.rp3agency.com/our-take-on-createtech/

CreateTech - exploration, inspiration, life goes on

Please let us know about any blog posts etc you run into about CreateTech so we can publish the links. Also we hope to get presenations and audio files available soon.

In the meantime here's a couple of summaries from esteemed friends:

http://terrytaylor.posterous.com/lessons-from-create-tech
http://www.danweingrod.com/2011/05/what-i-heard-at-createtech/

Some pix:
http://twitpic.com/tag/createtech

A good article from one our favorite bloggers Scott Brinker, Chief Marketing Technologist:
Put strategy and creative ahead of marketing technology

And the ongoing discussion at LinkedIn: 
should a creative technologist be able to actually code?