About "About Me"

I am currently involved in international marketing projects in New York City. Please let the following serve as an introduction to my work and career. Or check my profile on LinkedIn. 

DEC.BIO.AD.03.14.12

How to find me on Facebook

It seems that hyphenated last names don't work so well on Facebook. I've had a good number of people tell me they can't find me there. So try this: http://www.facebook.com/WildWildEast. It works.

"This parrot's not dead! It's resting." - Monty Python

"Dear David, Thanks for sending the book. My feedback is it's very well-written, your voice is clear, entertaining. I didn't read it all, but enough to tell you not to give up, and there's hope."

This note came to me yesterday from a publishing strategist and coach in regard to my book Wild Wild East. Admittedly, I've back-burnered it for some time but have gotten back on track in search of an agent. This kind of feedback does help.

Who am I? What am I? A stream of subconsciousness IV by those who may know - or not...

"you ARE an artist, and not a BS one, which is the best part, exactly, A BUSINESS artist", - Friend, Author/CNN regular, New York. "My take is that you are being authentic and taking charge of your own destiny ... by putting it out there and not being attached to the outcome." - friend, Marketing Director, Wisconsin. "I am no intellectual ....you are, so you keep to the blog writing LOL! - another friend, New York. "You have the most interesting adventures!" - an old friend, Illinois. "the Kinzo Air copy you wrote was very good, I have recommended you for further business", - Business associate, Berlin. "the thing that makes your blog addictive is the fact that you write (most of the time) what others think and (I am willing to bet) write them before others think them, or write them the way they would think them if they could think. " - Author, SEO professional, London. "By chance through a friend I got in touch with your YouTube presentation. I find it very different and interesting. Sometimes coincidences help to bring projects forward." - Potential Business Partner, Munich.

All interesting and positive but they bring to mind another not so positive comment recently that criticized me for selling myself, as opposed to my talents or what I do tacitly in business - and this is where many people choose to disagree. What is valuable about me or anyone? Am I personally the value in a job or relationship? Or is it a particular product I produce? Recalling the words of a headhunter back in the 80s, upon meeting me she said, "David, never send your portfolio without you being there. You are the product, you are interesting. Many people can do the work, but you, yourself are something special." And I think that many times, many people, forget that. We are our own personal products. It is said often, that aside from just being able to do brilliant work, that we must be nice to work with. We must do more than just cross the "T"s and dot the "I"s and give more than 100%. We must do that, and do it all gracefully. So that people will want to work with us again - and I'm afraid that I have not always understood that as much as I could have. Sometimes we think the product is so important, that people don't matter - when in fact, it is almost the opposite.

Anyone in business who thinks that just doing the best job is really doing the best job is missing a huge opportunity. I realized a long time ago that there were other people who could do something that I did, technically much better, but what I could bring to the party was in making that work, accessible, salable and even enjoyable. This is the one quality I have cherished most in my most successful business relationships - to have a job or a project not only reach and exceed its goals - but to also have had everyone involved feel good about that when it was time to move on to the next challenge.

Figure out that trick, and life's a dream.

Is it Bowie? Or is it Memorex? Nothing Much Happened (XIX) In München Today

Boy I'm giving away my age with that question. But, what the hell. Age is something I'm happy to give away. ??? So the other night, leaving the DLD party I end up sharing a cigarette and talking to these guys who, no slight intended, didn't really look like they could be affording the price tag of this three-day gig with all the stops pulled out. They've got punky t-shirts and ratty hair and dreads and well, they look cool enough, but way too young and too cool for the stylish digs we were leaving. I asked what they did and one guy says, "We're extreme mountain bikers and we're doing the alps", all California like and shit. "How'd you get in here?", I asked, and it was explained to me that their manager knows everybody and he just got them in - to P1, a club I've both hated and loved since I've been in Munich but not the kind of place I'd be hanging around if I were an extreme mountain biker. ??? "Cool", I responded. And then the other guy chirps up, "Bowie! Man! You look like David Bowie, man", I smile. "Fuckin' A he does, man - hey - do people ever tell you you look like Bowie - Man it's like freaky - No shit, we're hangin' out with David fucking Bowie", and they trip all over themselves in the conversation as I tell them that I've had thirty years of this story and yeah, it's cool and all that. "We're walkin' with David Bowie in Germany, man!" - as we paddle ourselves across the icy sidewalk outside and make for cabs. "G-night Bowie! G-night". ??? Fucked up people. Bowie was about Berlin, not Munich.

Take what you can get? Or get what you can take? I'll take the latter.

I'm going to do something I rarely do, and reprint nearly an entire post from Seth Godin, because this one really hit me where I was living at the time I read it. Now with Seth issuing a post to his blog every single day, the need for an editor comes seriously into question because 60% of what even the most talented writer can do is rubbish, but if you're willing to wade through that rubbish, many of his posts have real longstanding value. This is one of them.

Read Seth's post in the coloured print first, and then go back and see my own notations in the regular font. I think you'll see why it resonated with me.

Take what you can get (?)

When you're just starting out or when your organization is struggling or when the economy isn't hot, it's very tempting to take what you can get.

You just graduated from law school and you have a lot of debt and the best job you can get is doing collections work. Should you take it?

Your consulting firm is organized around providing high-value work for large corporations, but the only gigs you can get are small, struggling companies looking to spend a few hundred dollars a day. Should you take them?

The list goes on and on.

When I started my agency in Korea, CarlsonCreative, things were fairly bleak for the first six months. My staff told me that we were not getting pitches because we would not do them for free. I had also set a bar that clients needed to be of a blue-chip and pressworthy variety, ie: I wanted big logos so that when we finally won something, no matter how small, we could publicize it and get the street-cred of being an upstart David (no pun really) who had won against the Goliaths.

We scored our first pitch with the Armstrong flooring company from the US and followed that up with the Korean Broadcasting Corporation (KOBACO) and eventually, British American Tobacco - all paid presentations with the latter two turning into well paying clients and significant press generation vehicles. Within 18 months, we had become a 'hot' shop and the big agencies were truly scared of us.

There are two things worth remembering here:

1. Like bending a sapling a hundred years before the tree is fully grown and mature, the gigs you take early will almost certainly impact the way your career looks later on. If you want to build a law practice in the music industry, you'll need to take on musicians as clients, even if the early ones can't pay enough. If you want to do work for Fortune 500 companies, you'll need to do work for Fortune 500 companies, sooner better than later.

We took this to heart and I am still a believer in this today.

2. The definition of "can get" is essential. Maybe it seems like this gig or that gig is the best you can get because that's all you're exposing yourself to. Almost always, the best gig I could get is shorthand for the easiest gig I could get.

This has been redefined for me in the last few months with the pressure to get my feet planted in a new market representing the most basic of needs like eating and paying the rent. These things are of course primary, but certainly not the ultimate goal in the longer term. Why the hell, in a million years, would I want to teach business English in an already overcrowded market of teachers and schools who are busy undercutting each other on an almost daily basis, when I've got a quiver full of marketing and advertising arrows that have flown true for my entire career?

Because it's what I 'could' get initially, but it's not what I 'want' to get, eventually. What I'm after eventually is what I have been able to do my entire life - to balance business and creativity in a way which benefits my clients and provides me and my family a superior level of income and professional satisfaction.

Surviving is succeeding, no doubt about it. Doing the work is better than not doing the work. Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress. But, and it's a huge but, you define yourself by the work you do, and perhaps you need to redefine what you're willing to take and where you're looking for it. - Seth Godin

So I'm surviving. But that's not my definition of success. And I'm doing the work and not dying on the vine waiting for perfect in an imperfect world - but I'm spending more and more time defining what makes me unique in the market and striving to build a practice off that. This last week I renegotiated a contract which now pays me 30% more and broadens my responsibilities to consult on marketing with a client who had previously only needed language instruction.

Later in the week, I'm having coffee with a blue-chip sort of guy who works soley in the marketing business and in the evenings I busy myself with promoting this blog and writing copy for various businesses from software to arts and achitecture. All of this is still a far cry from having my own company in Korea, but at least I can remember what that was like, before we landed the big-fish client, and retrench my current life experience to more closely chase the dream of 'getting' what I can take, instead of just 'taking' what I can get.

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Many thanks to Seth Godin for helping me articulate this more clearly.

An Introduction: The Straight Story...

As I have now relocated to a new city and begin a new adventure in marketing, it seems only professional to offer a biography of professional proportions - and so here that is:


David Everitt-Carlson.BIO.DE.10.09


But all that said, it seems a bit lacking in spirit, wit and attitude, so please reference the cartoon on the left. That says, what I would very many times like to say, but can't. The cartoon comes from my friend, Hugh MacLeod, for Shitcreekconsulting.com and sums up - in one tiny picture and line - just what I'd like to say to all those clients who are more impressed with an agency's big logo than with the ideas and the people behind them, themselves. And let me tell you, I know plenty about the big boys, because I've worked with them, even been one of them, and seen them muck up quite a few accounts, without my help, on any number of clients - like the time Leo Burnett had Hallmark, United Airlines, Miller Beer, McDonald's and Sony, all in review at the same time. They managed to save one of those clients. But being one of the big boys is not always so bad - not if you're in a position to truly make a difference and have a client who wants to make a difference as well. I'll take the 4 years I worked with American Airlines and put a commercial on the Super Bowl (The world's most expensive media event) and tell you that spending a million bucks in production plus a few mil more for airtime isn't a half bad way to make a living. (Make sure to PAUSE the podcast in the sidebar before playing the videos so the soundtracks won't conflict.)



but I'll also tell you that spending all of $10 to make a series of Sony commercials that used no pictures at all, to promote their music products, was just as much fun, and probably twice as effective. It's all about the ideas.



And so in today's new media environment I'm much happier to know that a good idea that spreads is worth far more than any old idea that's being paid to be spread, and I now spend a whole lot more time urging my clients how much money they should not be spending as opposed to how much more they could be spending. It's all in the power of the ideas. For those who don't know me yet, or couldn't be bothered with the document above, it's enough to say that I've kissed enough butt to know what the big boys want and how they do what they do, but also kicked enough butt - from inside the system, to know how to work beyond and around the tried and true, towards ideas that are more trying and truthful. For those with a digital Jonze you can find me at the following: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and of course check out my other YouTube videos. I hope to meet many new faces in the coming days and will be happy to be digitally yours, as well as personally yours. Cheers.

David

If you like the blog, read the book: Wild Wild East

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Recently I've recieved a number of nice notes from people who've read my book, Wild Wild East over the summer. This note from Yves Capelle made me smile: " This is definitely good stuff - and should be published. I'll send the link to a few friends if you don't mind. If there's a hard cover to be published, let me know and I'll make an order."

As I'm now based in Germany, I realize that I've now come full circle to the land of the man who sent me to Asia and opens the first chapter in the book, Michael Conrad.

Chicago, April 1995: I'm sitting in my office on the 26th floor of the Leo Burnett building, watching the sailboats go by, when the telephone rings; it's Michael Conrad, our Worldwide Creative Director, and he has a question: "What do you know about Korea", he asks. "Nothing", I said - and that's how I got the job.

The book doesn't have an ending yet, but I may be living it now...

The first 70 pages is now available for download - or you can read it from the comfort of your own screen right here:


Wild Wild East - An American memoir of uncommon circumstance

For those who are not fans of the book-reading format, or it's just to damn small to read, download the standard view here:

Get me the big copy!

BLURB: (The publisher's sales pitch) Part memoir, part travelogue, part historical guide and part American business review, Wild Wild East follows the adventures of one businessman in his quest to have his creative life make sense. From an adoption agency in Manhattan to the board rooms of corporate America and then on to the far east, WWE weaves a story from 1995 through 2005 and beyond with flashbacks from the author's life that grow chronologically until they catch up with him in real time. Throughout the telling the author travels the globe through over 30 countries and the flashbacks occur every time he takes a trip, both before and after, usually when he is on a plane when there is plenty of time for reflection. In this way the story builds upon itself in both complexity and understanding from the reader as to why the central character makes the decisions he does and travels the roads of fortune or less fortune as the case unfolds.

Do give it a read and let me know how it works for you. And reTweet to pass it around.

What's Dem Damn New Widgets?

Here at the Wild Wild East Dailies (WWED for short) we're extremely concerned with reader input, reader satisfaction, reader interaction and feedback of all varieties, good and not so good - so we've recently instituted a few new widgets for you to get your clickers around.

The first is a "ReTweet" button for Twitter users. This button, as seen below, allows you to send a WWED post to Twitter, along with your personal 140 characters or so to let others know things like "Dave's totally off his meds now!" or "How the hell does this dude get from Vietnam to Paris, to Mali, to Munich on his piss-ant budget?" or "I believe David is actually a modern-day Jesus. Please read his post and see the gospel of our times". Please ReTweet at will. It will work automatically, so long as you are signed in to your Twitter account at the time of ReTweeting.



The second one you'll see is a nifty little 5-star rating system from OutBrain.com. This clever device allows you to love me or trash me, all with a click of the index finger, and I will never know who you are, friend or foe. This button works for all and there is no sign-up, no needing to join another worthless service and no spam in return. Just simply click on the star of your choice and be done with it. I hope you will all take the opportunity of using both of these interactions at your own convenience. They're both fun, quick and painless and help me add yet a few more interactions to the blog.

And as always, please leave your comments on the individual posts themselves. My love in writing starts first with your love in reading and the comments I get are essentially my pay for a job well done, or sloppily done, as I might on odd days. I thank you all for your time, devotion, attention and virtual love. It ain't easy traversing the globe and dragging a whole blog around with me. Without your support, I would have been just stuck on the tarmac in Hanoi. Cheers! Now click away...

Au Revoir Paris: The Wild Wild East Goes West VIII

As I make my exit from Paris, I head to my local Internet cafe to clear my mails and make final preparation for today's departure to Mali, Afrika - printing visas, touching base with Twitter Facebook, and the like - having a tiff with a friend over a little "confidential" firestorm - just your normal days workings in land land of international drama and intrigue. As far as drama and intrigue are concerned, savvy readers have detected more than a slight riff between my partner and I in these travels and I assure you, I suspect that riff is far from over. But on we will go. The path to Infinite Wisdom is no easy one, I assure you. Today is launched for me by the man at my Internet cafe, who only speaks French, bellowing "Bowie!, Monsieur David Bowie, bon jour!"- This pretty much cements my happiness for the day in knowing that it's not only in Asia where I seem to favour the great thin white duke, but also here in France. Bon jour Paris, and thank you. Au Revoir, until we meet again!

For more in the WWE Goes West Series check here:

I) The Wild Wild East Goes West: Onward Ho!
II) Frankfurt
III) C'est Si Bon
IV) Bon Jour Paris!
V) Les Picassos en Paris
VI) Nothing Much Happened en Paree Today
VII) Paris Wallpaper: Sometimes The Best Prayers Have No Words
VIII) Au Revoir Paris
IX) Is Publicis Groupe a Dead Brand?

WildWildEast is now my Facebook URL

Yes, this morning in true geek fashion I awoke to set my Facebook URL at 12 midnight Eastern Standard time in the US which turned out to be 11am here in Vietnam. Much has been made over the last week about making sure you register early so no one else can steal your name and as it turns out, that was of importance to me.

DavidCarlson.com is owned by a real estate agent in Los Angeles. WildWildEast.com is owned by a name-squatter in Florida and WildWildEast.blogspot.com is owned by an artist in Japan, so it was important that I own WWE on Facebook. My other choice of course, was WildWildEastDailies, which is the name of the blog but I didn't figure that would be too much in demand and it's already 7 slots on page one when you Google it - and my own name, no matter how you configure it, seems to be doing a good enough job on it's own of helping old friends find me and old bill collectors not find me, so I decided that WildWildEast would be my FB handle, since that is the name of the book and what got this whole enterprise started in the first place.

So here's the ticket: http://www.facebook.com/WildWildEast You should see the picture on this post when you get there.

Check in. Be my friend. Don't sign me up for any stupid "Vampire Bit Me" or "Here's a Virtual-Frigging Drink" games and we'll be good to go. See you on #FB!

Dear Anonymous II

A few months ago I received a comment from an anonymous reader and it was very complimentary. I seemed to have hit a nerve with at least the discriminating and ethereal crowd. Today, I received another comment from an anonymous reader, but a different one. That's it! We're changing the name of the book to "Anonymous"!


"What began as an interesting Blog with value-judgements I sometimes found appealing, sometimes irksome but always interesting, is fast developing into a visceral (and eviscerating) observational post on reality as we feel it rather than see it. David, keep these coming. I hate to admit it but Wild Wild East has become addictive."

Over the length of this blog I've received any number of comments and mails from people I don't know at all. Rhona in New York was the one to let me know of the Vanity Fair story on Our Man in Saigon, and these other anonymous comments that trickle in from time to time, keep me grounded and motivated at the times when maybe I need it most. Thank you all. Long live your lovely anonymity!

To the lost:

Hello lost. You became lost when you went away. Not by some disaster or force majur, but by sheer inability to be there when it mattered most. One of you left for money and the SEC, another left for god, and yet another left because she was just terribly unhappy with herself and her business. Another left because he doesn't know how to balance business and marriage. My wife left when my company transfered me to Korea. Shit happens. People don't get lost because of you. People loose themselves because they don't know what to do. People get lost because they weren't looking for where they were going in the first place. Care for your friends and lovers but don't be surprised when they leave. A dollar has become a precious thing. Follow the money. That's how people get lost. Then in the end, finally, you can see what you've found.

Bentleys ain't squat in Vietnam nomore!

Move over boyz. Da Rolls Phantoms iz here in Vietnam and they're taking over from the Bentleys .

No longer a centrally planned government with it's feet in Stalinism, Vietnam has now embraced the worst of western society - making its countrymen look like total peons while the chosen drive around in the economic equivalent of the Space Shuttle. I'm absolutely sure that Ho Chi Minh, the President and holistic leader of his people, who refused to live in the Presidential mansion and had a far more simple home built on the grounds, would approve. Bollocks. Just take a look at the photos of Rolls Royce Phantoms, all shot right here in Vietnam, and notice particularly, the spare environs that surround them. Bollocks is right. I saw this same phenomena in Mongolia years ago when I went there to produce a TV show about the 2004 Olympics. In Mongolia, one of the poorest and most sparsely populated countries on the planet, there was no shortage of jet-black Hummers trolling the Gur infested countryside (pictured on the right), courtesy of the local gold and silver mining companies -- the only people in Mongolia who were making any money at all. And here in Vietnam, things seem to be catching up with America, Europe, Japan and Korea. I started counting Bentleys just this year. Looks like in no time the Commies will be pitching themselves off high-rise buildings and getting their government to bailout their bad business deals once the Rolls needs an oil change. And who pays? The people always pay. And hasn't it always been that way? The current fact that 10% of the world's population holds 80% of the wealth doesn't seem at all shocking once you remember that Louis XIV had the entire, largely unpaid, French court living in the Palace of Versailles, in what amounted to impeccably decorated dormitories, while the common people starved. (Cue: Beatles, "Revolution") Vietnam can certainly thank France for that legacy. But as George Washington never lived in the White House and Ho Chi Minh never owned more than a Pugeot 440, (pictured on the left) maybe it's time for our leaders to set an example for their people again. George W. Bush has certainly assured that as history advances, his photo will hold no match for that of Che Guavera adorning t-shirts of yet another generation to grow and challenge the status quo. In Vietnam we can also rest assured that no Bentley or Rolls owner will ever have to compete with Ho Chi Minh for those same t-shirt honours.

My thanks to DJGJ for the Rolls info and make sure to give them some grief about having a blog with nothing in it!

How tiny is my pee-pee? And how far will I go to fix it?

Dear friends:

Recently the subject of penis size has come into question regarding yours truly. I wouldn't have noticed the pitiful size of my diddley-digit had the Internet not ever so helpfully pointed it out and, yes, age factors figure in here as well as probably early childhood memories of extremely well-hung men in public swimming pool locker rooms and sex shops boasting devices that could make an elephant blush. But what do women expect from me at this stage in life here in banana-land? Am I the laughing stock of every well-hung tropical fruit tree? Hell around here, the coconut trees alone make you consider your own hanging spherical embellishments. But, thankfully, help arrived last week in the form of the following email offering me a free penile enhancement product for, well... absolutely, no cash. I found this positively amazing. And you know what? You might too. And so I am printing the offer for all of my friends as a sort of gift, exactly as it appeared to me.

Read through it. It's really quit genuine and honest and I'm sure a lot of other men out there could be helped by it. I was touched.

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Hello, I'm the webmaster of www.peloop.com I wanted to know if by any chance you would be interested in doing an unbiased review of our site www.peloop.com on your blog http://wildwildeastdailies.blogspot.com/ If you agree you can choose between receiving a product sample or receiving a payment.

If you choose the product sample instead of the payment the sample is yours to keep and you don’t need to send it back.

The product sample that you can get is Peloop - a penis enhancer and you can see it at the address above. If you are interested please click here to receive your sample or your money:

www.seoblogreviews.com/acceptreview.py?e453c26cfc5d13217b

If you don't want to ever receive mails from us, just click the following link:

http://www.seoblogreviews.com/unsubscribe.py?param=e453c26cfc5d13217b4d05ba83490843

If you have any questions just send a reply to this email. Thank you

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I hope this proposal can prove beneficial to some of my more manly-challenged readers but I myself have opted not to participate in the program. It was a heart wrenching decision. With all the time I've put into my book and this blog should I sell my soul to the sultan of schlongs just for a few more hits on my site? Didn't really add up to me. I figure I hit far more women with this blog than I do with my winkie these days and my bets are better placed here. (Cue: drooping noodle sound)

A Buddhist Funeral Prayer

A few months ago a friend here in Saigon, Ramsey Montgomery passed away at a rather young age. His parents held his memorial service in a Buddhist temple. Following is a prayer passed out to the gathering. We didn't speak this prayer in unison. Rather we were left to use it as we chose whilst the monk chanted and tapped out his rhythm with a wooden stick on a gourd.

The phrasings and Capitalization are how it was passed on to me:


O Buddhas and Bodhisattvas,
abiding in all directions,
endowed with great compassion,
endowed with fore-knowledge,
endowed with the divine eye,
endowed with love,
affording protection to sentient beings,
consent through the power of your
great compassion to come forth.
Consent to accept these offerings concretely
laid out and mentally created.
O Compassionate Ones,
you who possess the wisdom of understanding,
the love of compassion,
the power of doing divine deeds and of
protecting in incomprehensible measure.
( __________ ) is passing from this world to the next.
He/she is taking a great leap.
The light of this world has faded for him/her.
He/she has entered solitude with his/her karmic forces.
He/she has gone into a vast Silence.
He/she is borne away by the Great Ocean of birth and death.
O Compassionate Ones,
protect ( _________ ),who is defenseless.
Be to him/her like a father and a mother.
O Compassionate Ones,
let not the force of your compassion be weak,
but aid him/her.
Forget not your ancient vows.


My enjoyment and surprise is this particular evocation comes in the last line – "Forget not your ancient vows" – in that it nearly chides the Gods should they be remiss in their duty to our human friend. To me it indicates a sort of equality, a communication between the two parties, in that the Gods and we as devotees share a symbiotic relationship – something not stressed in the Christian faiths.

For clarification of the manuscript, Buddhas are the Gods and Botisattvas are the reincarnated Buddhas such as the Dalai Lama - people who are believed to be Gods but in a human form only for a lifetime. The painting is by Robert Spellman.

$0.83 Cents? Adsense makes no cents!

Yup, that's the amount of money I've made off of Google Adsense for the entire life of this blog. Sheeeeze. No getting rich around here – or my writing sucks.

So I'm doing the all-American thing and blaming you – my readers, for being low-life, lazy no-clickers! C'mon people. you know the drill!

After reading whatever drivel I have just scribbled, you need to go to the sidebar and just click randomly on whatever ad Google has ever-so-inadvisedly chosen to accompany my blog: Hemmoroid medications, penis enlargement, Vietnam snowboarding expeditions ... whatever. you don't have to buy a thing. Just click on an ad. Because that's how it works. I get a credit for every idiot click that comes out of my blog and I'm betting that plenty of idiots stop by from time to time. But the word is "monetize". I need to monetize said idiots. So be a pal. Be a PayPal! Do your part in just screwing with the system and send me a thousandth of a penny every time you click on something/anything...

Saigon 182.5: The movie

So what does Saigon really look like? To me, it looked like this after 6 months. And what does "Saigon 182.5" mean? It means this: a circle has 360 degrees. A year has 365 days – and so six months has 182.5.

And by the way: Go to the sidebar and scroll down to the Podcast control to pause the music before playing the film. That way the soundtracks won't conflict.




This film was shot originally just as whatever had been on my cel-phone for six months and edited in the Mac. A compendium of stuff. I made it as a sort of video postcard for friends. Then, in the summer of 2006 it was entered and deemed a finalist in the Nokia/Discovery Channel MobiFilms contest – a film contest for movies done exclusively on mobile phones. It was actually shot on a Motorola V3. The contest judges took particular note of that. Whilst participating in the contest we were all given very expensive and insanely complicated Nokia n93s to shoot with, including a Carl Zeiss lense and an inane editing interface that made programming a VCR seem easy. The task was to shoot and edit a film in one hour. My film that day sucked. The shots and script were ok but we were required to edit it in the phone using the Nokia interface that could only be described as Flinstonian. This film is much better and no phone should be made to edit film.

I think Nokia understands that now. They abandoned the MobiFilms contest concept after just two years and have since been preoccupied with coming up with their own iPhone killer. Ha. And me? I'm back to Motorola. I won a $700 retail Nokia phone for my efforts and sold it for $500. Big money in Vietnam.