2015 Yearnote

Inspired by my talented cousin Paul Carvill‘s year note for 2014 I thought I’d have a go. The speed at which 2015 has passed means either that I’m rapidly getting old, or it was super busy.

Starting with work stuff then, 2015 was full of personal firsts.

I jetted off to Frankfurt for my first international business trip in November. I traveled with my client from JLR Steve Cobelli to meet the team who run JLR’s marketing for the European region. We’re working on a new global owners website and in preparation we need to see what’s working well in each region. The owners club for Jaguar in Germany was the most impressive with the majority of owners if not active at least registered.

A big project for me in 2014 was the build of the current Landrover.com website. I wrote the award submission for the project in the Automotive Campaign / Strategy category for the national Drum Network Awards. In November Connect brought home the trophy for this project as well as Midlands Marketing Business of Year which rounded of the best year ever for awards. You can read more about the year’s haul here. I’ve been involved in projects and submissions for creative awards before, some of which have won awards (including the Range Rover Evoque) but never an award for the technical web build as it’s much trickier to explain to judges what makes good code than a good advert for example.

In November I also attended The Lovies Awards which I didn’t know much about – the name is sarcastic as it’s definitely the most serious internet awards do I’ve been to. For example winner of the most creative use of data was the European Space Agency in recognition of landing Rosetta’s Philae lander on a moving comet. Certainly makes a big data loyalty card scheme seem irrelevant. Connect took a couple of JLR clients along as Landrover.com won an award for UX in a lower but still impressive tier of awards, this time submitted by our partners in the build – OgilvyOne.

For 6 months of the year I worked on a top secret digital campaign to advertise my client’s sponsorship of a blockbuster movie. I can’t say much about it – I’ve never done anything like it and I’ll be lucky to do so again. It involved shooting vehicles for photography and some of the film’s crew for films, all assets shot exclusively for the web which made such a difference. I’ve never lead such a serious production so I learned a huge amount about the craft of photography and cinematography – some of which was surprisingly low-fi but no less skillful for it. I spent a little time in Soho with one of the film’s production companies and it was a tiny glimpse of how massive an undertaking a major film really is. There are some parallels with adverts, if you consider them very short films with increasingly high production standards. The passion of the people involved made the biggest impression on me, no matter how small their part is they have the same commitment to the final outcome.

In September Connect opened a new office in East Birmingham, a whole floor of Building 300 in the commercial park adjacent to Birmingham Airport and the NEC. It’s a great space with good facilities and transport links. The whole of Connect’s JLR development team are based there along with some employees from our partners Spark44 and SDL. It’s great having everyone under one roof in collaborative teams.

Outside of work many wonderful things have happened.

The biggest was the safe arrival of my second daughter Florence in September. Florence is a little star and I’ve been amazed how different it is having two. Now Bella has got used to the idea I think she’ll make a great big sister. Bella joined pre-school in the summer and took to it like a duck to water. She’ll be starting primary school in September 2016 so we have been visiting local schools to make our first, second and third choices. We are spoiled for choice in Warwick with Emscote, Coten End, Brookhurst and Woodloes all being subtlety different but all excellent schools. It was amazing to see how much has changed in a generation. One school told us they have replaced all their computers with tablets as they consider them redundant (every school had a table of ipads and wireless headphones in reception class.) With programming on the curriculum Bella can choose between after school music class or lunch break code club!

My sister’s first child Sophia-Rose also joined the family in February, and since then my niece has grown into a robust little character. She has already been diving in Italian mountain streams, swimming on the Cornish coast and sunning herself in Egypt so it’s no surprise.

I got a couple of gadgets en vogue for 2015 – wearable tech in the form of a Fitbit flex & VR in the Google Cardboard style – goggles and my Iphone 6S. Aside from the strap breaking on my Fitbit after only 6 months I have really enjoyed collecting my sleep and activity data everyday. The initial gamification of trying to hit your daily steps challenge was fun, but looking back over a year of data  I find much more interesting. The VR goggles I got for Christmas so haven’t used much yet – but the first few free apps I’ve found have been really fun doing very little and impressed the whole family. Bella tried a scuba diving app and immediately understood and accepted what it was – amazing to imagine growing up with this technology as totally normal. I’ve heard about some 360 photos from Mars taken by the rover that I’m going to try next.

I listened to a few podcasts prior to 2015 but it was this year when I realised what a thriving medium it is. The freedom of content and niche audiences provides a refreshingly simple and very human way to consume information – perfect for traveling for me. My favourites are Distraction Pieces from Scroobius Pip for life tales and lessons, Daily Tech News Show which is basically the Radio 4 Today Programme for my industry, Answer Me This for high and low brow humour in the form of brutal honesty and the stand out Digital Human from Aleks Krotoski / BBC which is Oxford University standard research and analysis on what the internet is doing to our society.

I haven’t seen many films on the big screen in 2015 – but I managed to catch three big ones. Interstellar is close to the perfect movie for me, SPECTRE was a disappointing return to cheese in my opinion and Star Wars episode 7 was a fun, familiar experience. I have watched lots of on demand box sets whilst Florence has slept on me at all hours of the night and I’ve really enjoyed Mr Robot, Fargo and House of Cards. I’ve treasured the last 5 episodes of Treme season 3 which I feel has been shut down when it was just getting going – it’s a real shame such important messages don’t get the support of other shows but I guess that’s life. Better Call Saul I enjoyed more than the last couple of seasons of Breaking Bad, and I hope it continues as I’d love to see a few seasons exploring the background of Mike Ehrmantraut or Gus Fring. Homeland season 5 however was a disappointing flop for me that I just stopped watching after a few episodes. I’ve been very committed to this show from the start but I think they have lost their way. I hope an on demand provider takes advantage of the data they must have on localised support to show popular shows at cinemas – it would be genius and so easy to promote via the platform.

That’s my highlights from 2015 – let’s see what 2016 has in store!