Blast Radius. Strategy Summit Europe 2011.

Juli 8th, 2011 • Allgemein
Tags: Agencies, Amsterdam, Blast Radius, personal, Strategy

So I just spent two great days with about a dozen strategy colleagues from our five European Blast Radius offices. The agenda for the first Strategy Summit for our (massively growing) agency was to share our individual perspectives on how to further develop strategy for our clients. And of course getting to know each other.

Quite impressive to realize that the agency I joined in 2010 really has become a major player in (and beyond) Europe. Even more so considering the fact that we built this in just one year with a number of really cool major brands as clients. Thanks to the whole strategy team for this insight. And of course thanks for following me to my local dive bar. But that’s a different story.

Blast Radius Europe has offices in Amsterdam, London, Hamburg and Paris. We are always looking for smart people. Check out our vacancies here. And feel free to tell your friends in case you stumble upon something interesting.

Good Morning. Just a quick Saturday Morning Update.

Mai 7th, 2011 • Underway
Tags: Amsterdam, Blast Radius, Boss, Gerald, News, Planning, Strategy, Underway

Just a quick update on a couple of things…

• Awards! The ones who know me personally know that I passionately hate marketing awards. How cool that my team actually won one of the few really cool digital awards – a Webby goes out to Boss Bottled Night. I won’t even start to pretend I personally had anything to do with it. The proud creators know who they are. Check out the website or take a sneak peek at the embedded video at the bottom of this article.
• Drinks! My agency Blast Radius is constantly launching something these days. One of the really interesting projects is Bacardi’s new bartender community True Originals (Facebook here) that went live a week ago. It is not just a community for bartenders but a place where they can improve their really, really, really (and I mean really) important professional skills collaboratively. On August 22nd Bacardi will start challenging the community. So you better make sure the bartender of your choice is part of it.
• Amsterdam Strategists! Next week, on May 12th 2011, Amsterdam’s marketing and advertising strategists (whatever that is) will meet again. There is a joke about Germans that claims wherever a German goes the first thing he will do is to start a club. I am no exception which is why I started bringing Amsterdam’s strategists together. Actually all I did was to start a Facebook group while Heather Le Fevre actually contacted every Planner in town to turn it into an inspiring monthly event. So if you are in Amsterdam next Thursday and if you are a Planner (however you define that) or would like to become one – please contact me. I am glad to invite you.
• And more strategists! While we are talking about my colleague Heather…a while ago she had the great idea to create something that was really missing in general – a socio demographical census of the planner guild worldwide. Her planner survey 2010 was already extremely insightful and she has invested quite a bit of work to set up a new online survey for 2011. So if you are a Planner/Strategist (again: however you define that) make sure you take part in this year’s planner survey 2011. The more colleagues answer, the better the results. Here is the link to the survey…
• Something completely different! Beyond my blog davaidavai.com I am running quite a number of specific niche blogs/channels that I like to feed – simply because I think the world is quite an interesting place. So I want to highlight two little communities that I built and that I love. Feel free to join: Number 1 is the Facebook page for davaidavai which features some of the articles I publish here. But actually it’s more than that – it’s my platform for stuff that I want to share without necessarily blogging about it. So like davaidavai on Facebook please. Number 2 is PlanetWTF – a Facebook page where I share interesting useless knowledge with a focus on history, geography and politics. It’s simple, fun, and it is here.

Well…that’s all for the moment. And here goes the award video for BOSS Bottled Night…

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Daddy? What is a Corporate Community Manager?

März 9th, 2011 • Jobs
Tags: Agencies, Amsterdam, Blast Radius, community management, Interview, Jobs, People

I work as a digital strategist – a job profile that did not exist 5 years ago, as many of my colleague’s professions are also more or less new. One of my colleagues here at Blast Radius Amsterdam is Henry Greaves, a fresh Amsterdamer who originally came from the UK. Henry is a full time Community Manager and my real time counterpart on one of our key accounts. It’s still not too common for an agency to employ full time Community Managers. And I think some of you are pretty interested in a similar position.

Time to ask Henry what he actually does.

How did you become community manager?

It was a happy accident. I graduated with a degree in Theology five years ago, and then worked in various jobs in the media. I worked in PR for Amazon, but also loved writing and got published by some reputable magazines, like Dazed & Confused and Monocle. That led to work as part of two-man team writing a blog for French Connection, Manifesto. From then on my focus was working in Digital. The fact that there are no rules in Digital, and that you can try so many new ways of getting people’s attention makes it an incredibly exciting area to work in. So I was keen to stay in it.

Eventually Blast Radius offered me a job as Community Manager for a major client. I think they liked me because my experience of cultural writing suited the client. And the fact I had a small bit of digital experience helped. But I lacked many skills a CM needs at that time, but it was relatively easy to pick up, as the team at Blast is full of experts. So the SEO specialist taught me a bit of SEO, strategists taught me how to deal with analytics, and I could pick up all the specialists bits and pieces a Community Manager needs to know as I went along.

Henry, we are working together for quite some time now. Can you describe your daily routine as a corporate community manager?

I think the most important thing to point out as a Community Manager is that there is no all-encompassing job description. I solely work on my account, and other CMs work entirely on their projects. Each role is entirely dependent on the job and client specifications. So there is no “Community Manager’s routine”.

In my job, I spend most of my time planning and making content. Whether that’s blogs, or helping to concept for competitions, or writing creative briefs. I spend roughly half a day each week compiling statistics relating to the performance of the site, and monitoring Listening platforms. And whatever time I have left I am seeding the site, pushing the social media aspects, and dealing with individual queries from members of the community.
It’s quite a full-on job, as by its nature you can never be finished. There is always more work you could do to try to bolster community growth etc.

Do your parents understand your job? What do you tell them?

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It’s Movember. Time to grow the Tachetags.

November 11th, 2010 • 2 comments Experimental, Friends, We like
Tags: Amsterdam, Blast Radius, Experimental, Funny, Manliness, Movember, Tachetags, Tachtag

Different cultures, different habits – while I worked for Neue Digitale / Razorfish we celebrated Mustache March to celebrate the beauty of male facial upper lip hair. Here in Amsterdam Movember is the time of year for real men to show how fuzzy the remote area between nose and mouth can get.

Unfortunately I am not a real man. This year my upper lip stays virgin. Anyway my colleagues here at Blast Radius Amsterdam have started a pretty cool initiative to celebrate the best in man – Tach(e)tags. The tach(e)tags page collects all status updates on twitter if you simply add the hashtashetag #tachetag to it. #Movember works as well. If you attach your mustache photo update to the tweet it will be displayed here and you will immediately enter the eternal halls of manliness.

Time to go. Check out tachtag.com and start sending us your tache-updates

HTML5. A Great Intro to What is New.

August 23rd, 2010 • Tech
Tags: Agencies, Blast Radius, Cool, Development, flash, HTML5, Prediction, Presentation, Tech, Tools, Trends, visual

When you start a new job it is always extremely interesting to find out about your coworkers after a while. Who is this guy across the table actually? And what did he or she do before we actually started collaborating?
One of my new colleagues who really surprised me is Bobby van der Sluis.

Bobby is Technical Experience Director here at Blast Radius, Amsterdam and a veteran of Flash Development. He is author of UFO and co-author of SWFObject 2 (along with a lot of other projects), which are both well-known open source JavaScript libraries for detecting the Adobe Flash Player and embedding Flash content in web pages. In addition to that he does publish articles at A list apart quite often and speaks at conferences. Oooh….and he is also a very nice guy – a fact that should not go unnoticed here as well.

Anyway, last week Bobby held a very insightful presentation about Flash HTML5 and his personal perspectives on its progress. It is interesting to watch Flash veterans such as Bobby to reinvent their job profiles and start developing on a similar  different platform.

Here is Bobby’s presentation. Check out his blog as well and follow him on Slideshare.

Amsterdam. We are having a Blast.

Juni 1st, 2010 • 5 comments Underway
Tags: Amsterdam, Blast Radius, Underway

If you are somehow connected to me personally, via twitter, or Facebook you have probably heard that I have just moved to Amsterdam.

Apart from being overwhelmed by a lot of travelling lately I am now living in an appartment of a friend in one of the coolest cities on the planet. My new employer is Blast Radius, a very dynamic, young and creative agency from Vancouver, Canada. It is responsible for some very successful digital ideas for Starbuck’s, Michelin, Nokia and many others. And I am proud to be part of the team now.

What I can say from about 48 hours in Amsterdam is this – It is a fantastic small big city which makes it easy for strangers to feel pretty much at home in a short period of time. Even though it is freezing cold for June, you can simply explore the many little streets, have a coffee in one of the myriads of small restaurants or smoke try delicious Indonesian food. Looks like a good city to move to. Plus my new colleagues seem to be as perfect to hang out with as my former friends and colleagues at Neue Digitale / Razorfish. I miss you anyway, guys.

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