Nuggets from the group:

“All of a sudden we’re dealing with people again, not just 1′s and 0′s. Which I think is what motivates us. We actually have to talk about human beings and emotions and senses. That’s good – because we’re human too.”

“Maybe it’s not a million people, maybe it’s a thousand people. It’s a f*cking cool party and those a thousand people will be impressed and affected in a way that a million people aren’t. These success metrics that the industry has created are so misleading, you know everyone cooks the books anyway. You do some viral and you cook it with some software and you’ve gotten 150K likes before you even wake up in the morning and it’s like “Oh hey cool – we made it.” And then another 10,000 people watch it and it sucked. So why don’t we go for a thousand really important eyeballs that have the money, the spending power, the recognition, and the social networks themselves who want to talk about it. The influencers. I guess so one of the answers is to build the technology and a way to talk about the experience that actually makes sense and we can calculate and get impressions on it that are valid. But the other thing might just be like not to sell it like everything else. This is not online. This is not the same. We shouldn’t judge this the same way.”

“Half of what we do is design a big idea – and then figure out how the hell we’re going to get that video into this space with real people in real time, with all the complexities of human beings not showing up or something not arriving.”

“Prototyping is crucial because it shows proof of concept. These ideas can be crazy – and they can’t be judged in total before they’re done… so prototyping gets us as close as possible, allows critique and direction, approvals and forward motion.”

“There’s a real joy in creative technology and a fluency to it as well. The technology exists, it’s just how to apply it. Having an idea of what’s possible, what’s out there, is important because a lot of ideas can be scalable – you just need to put some imagination to it.”

“The metaphor of building a house in a day is quite apt. These are longer projects. You wouldn’t want your house built in a day.”

“There are a lot of problems with the nomenclature of things because just because things are made by computers doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re a “digital” thing. It’s experiential thing as well. Especially in the production of it, you have to look at it as more of an event, as a “party” that just happens to be lit by computers.”

“It’s is about finding creative ways to set yourself up for measurement.”

“A billboard has eyeballs on it. Clients understand traditional formats. As [interactive] is a newer format, clients don’t understand it so well. The problem with interactive formats in the client’s eyes is metrics – how to show how many people have been affected by the advertising? The metrics and data capture isn’t there yet.”

“Interactive advertising is not just a billboard in Times Square. It’s 10 different things happening at once – and that’s something we have to explain better to our clients. You can capture one segment of all of those people but you can’t capture all of them. Find your target and go after them.”

“Clients have ideas about “media impressions” and ways to judge ROI. Sometimes a great experience for a smaller number of people is more powerful than a bunch of false impressions, likes, or fans that are often cooked anyway.”

Thanks guys. That was fun!

It was so great to be surrounded by a group of such talented, engaged and intelligent people.

Looking forward to our field trips to schools all over the US!

We were asked to develop a futuristic take on “The Study” – so we pitched a digital environment (light, sound, interactivity) inspired by Acura. Go figure. Doors open (to those lucky few) in October.

Initial Press from Curbed.