A private community for creators and innovators
Innovators need to speak out to creatives
I just wanted to add this blog post to motivate innovators to increase their contribution to our community.
This is a mixed community with a very specific role: To create a dialog between the creative professions and technology innovators.
When I was in high school I was one of those kids who abhorred having to take science and math not only did I struggle to pass tests and exams, none of my teachers ever considered I could have an aptitude for their subjects. On the other hand I excelled in the Visual Arts, coming from a family where basically everyone was in a creative profession I accepted fate early on and prepared myself for Art School. However through a set of unforeseen circumstances and a passion to see the world I never did get to go to Art school, eventually I settled on a job in tourism and later on went back to university to study Sociology. I caught an entrepreneurial vibe during the late 90’ies and started my own business.
At this time a graduate in Computer Sciences came in to take care of our office computer network and created a website for me, his enthusiasm for innovation was catching, I began to see the opportunities that lay ahead using the internet to accelerate my business and absorbed everything he could teach me within a short time. Later I started creating my own websites using MS Frontpage, then I switched to Macromedia and Adobe software, I taught myself html, xml, MySql explored all the aspects of creating data connections, data distribution systems, system architectures, peer to peer networks, asp tools etc. There is very little I haven’t spent time learning to do, even the inside of my pc is assembled by yours truly.
It was when I was working at an advertising agency in Belgium a few years ago as a business development consultant that my interest in new media became more prevalent. I started on a mission to present the creative department with tools to create advertising campaigns which in my opinion would increase consumer engagement and efficiency for the advertiser.
The first campaigns introduced the simple concept of attaching an http request to make a phone call to the viewer of a viral movie. The technology provider was a company which sold CRM tools such as Click to Call mainly to large ecommerce companies. They had never thought about targeting their products to be used by advertising agencies in campaigns. However thanks to the creative vision of the sales director and the flexibility of their technology department we achieved creating a new product and to date one of the most successful viral campaigns in Europe.
But this story is not without its pitfalls along the way. The technology company enthused by its success, launched the new product commercially, sales were coming their way however sales cycles were lengthy and very complex. The dialog between creative departments in ad agencies and the sales engineers were never simple. There were always a zillion questions left to be answered, could they do it this way, that way, could the technology be tweaked to do this, that or the other.
In technology we like to think anything is possible, the excellent conceptually creative mind asks a new question: If anything is possible why won’t you do it? The answer is usually far removed from his reality, this is not his art, and where anything is possible that the human imagination sets forth, this is a business where innovators work within constraints of time and commercial priorities. Disillusion follows disenchantment and the Creative rarely infringes the frontiers of what is possible beyond his own imagination.
Innovation for Creativity was established to initiate an ongoing dialog between innovators, represented by the technology industry and representatives from the creative professions. It is important that we share a common language and technology is embraced with enthusiasm and the catalyst for great and beautiful ideas to become reality.
Yours truly,
Elisabeth Jane Bertrand
Founder of Innovation for Creativity
This is a mixed community with a very specific role: To create a dialog between the creative professions and technology innovators.
When I was in high school I was one of those kids who abhorred having to take science and math not only did I struggle to pass tests and exams, none of my teachers ever considered I could have an aptitude for their subjects. On the other hand I excelled in the Visual Arts, coming from a family where basically everyone was in a creative profession I accepted fate early on and prepared myself for Art School. However through a set of unforeseen circumstances and a passion to see the world I never did get to go to Art school, eventually I settled on a job in tourism and later on went back to university to study Sociology. I caught an entrepreneurial vibe during the late 90’ies and started my own business.
At this time a graduate in Computer Sciences came in to take care of our office computer network and created a website for me, his enthusiasm for innovation was catching, I began to see the opportunities that lay ahead using the internet to accelerate my business and absorbed everything he could teach me within a short time. Later I started creating my own websites using MS Frontpage, then I switched to Macromedia and Adobe software, I taught myself html, xml, MySql explored all the aspects of creating data connections, data distribution systems, system architectures, peer to peer networks, asp tools etc. There is very little I haven’t spent time learning to do, even the inside of my pc is assembled by yours truly.
It was when I was working at an advertising agency in Belgium a few years ago as a business development consultant that my interest in new media became more prevalent. I started on a mission to present the creative department with tools to create advertising campaigns which in my opinion would increase consumer engagement and efficiency for the advertiser.
The first campaigns introduced the simple concept of attaching an http request to make a phone call to the viewer of a viral movie. The technology provider was a company which sold CRM tools such as Click to Call mainly to large ecommerce companies. They had never thought about targeting their products to be used by advertising agencies in campaigns. However thanks to the creative vision of the sales director and the flexibility of their technology department we achieved creating a new product and to date one of the most successful viral campaigns in Europe.
But this story is not without its pitfalls along the way. The technology company enthused by its success, launched the new product commercially, sales were coming their way however sales cycles were lengthy and very complex. The dialog between creative departments in ad agencies and the sales engineers were never simple. There were always a zillion questions left to be answered, could they do it this way, that way, could the technology be tweaked to do this, that or the other.
In technology we like to think anything is possible, the excellent conceptually creative mind asks a new question: If anything is possible why won’t you do it? The answer is usually far removed from his reality, this is not his art, and where anything is possible that the human imagination sets forth, this is a business where innovators work within constraints of time and commercial priorities. Disillusion follows disenchantment and the Creative rarely infringes the frontiers of what is possible beyond his own imagination.
Innovation for Creativity was established to initiate an ongoing dialog between innovators, represented by the technology industry and representatives from the creative professions. It is important that we share a common language and technology is embraced with enthusiasm and the catalyst for great and beautiful ideas to become reality.
Yours truly,
Elisabeth Jane Bertrand
Founder of Innovation for Creativity
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