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We've pulled together a short summary of what the team at Google Creative Lab are involved with at SXSW in March 2012.

Rather than begging (there's plenty of time for that, trust me), and borrowing openly from the way our friends at BBH Labs have outlined what they're up to in March, we've simply outlined what we're talking about and suggested why it might be worth you spending 15 seconds voting for us. Please have a read.

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1. Collaboration Welcome, No A$$holes Allowed

A panel about the importance of company culture in evolving new models of collaboration between clients and agencies, with a particularly emphasis on practical lessons from real experience. With panellists from Big Spaceship, CO, Vanity Fair & Hyper Island. Ben Malbon from Creative Lab will be on this panel.

More details and voting here.

As the modern browser evolves and accelerates, WebGL is bringing a whole new range of creative opportunities to artists, innovators and brands. This panel explores what's possible today and what should be possible tomorrow. Panellists include Ken Russell & Greg Tavares from Google and Shanna Tellerman from Autodesk. Aaron Koblin, the head of Creative Lab's Data Arts team, will also be on this panel.

3. Four Chief Innovation Officers Defend Their Titles

This builds on a debate that fired up earlier this year (captured, kind of, on this blog, right here) about the need for and responsibilities of so-called 'Chief Innovation Officers' in creative agencies. This is a panel that includes Edward Boches (Chief Innovation Officer, Mullen), David Armano (EVP, Global Innovation & Integration, Edelman), Saneel Radia (Director of Innovation at BBH New York / BBH Labs NYC), Anders Sjostedt (MD, Hyper Island, North America), David Erixon (co-Founder, Hyper Island). Ben Malbon (ex Executive Director of Innovation at BBH & co-Founder of BBH Labs is also on this panel (though has long since given up his impressive title).

More details and voting here.

More details and voting here.

5. Skynet vs Mad Max: Battle for the Future

6. Help Wanted:  Hunting High & Low for Talent

Lastly - but perhaps most importantly - a panel on talent. Digital strategists, designers and writers are in higher demand than ever. And to properly thrive once hired they need to be both T-Shaped, and land in an environment that knows how to get the best out of T-Shaped people. In this panel, recruiters from a range of creative companies discuss how they look for, find and then successfully hire awesome digital talent. Panellists include Ben Fished (Adopt A Hacker), Jami Hoffman (Playdom) and AKQA's Lionel Carreon. Greg Christman, Creative Lab's Head of Recruitment, is on this panel.

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(From the YouTube 'About' section)

A notorious nine-minute speed through the streets of Paris, shot on a camera strapped to the front of a Ferrari 275 GTB (though apparently this was actually a Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9., dubbed with the sound of Lelouche's Ferrari 275GTB), this injection of adrenaline was an illegal shoot which led to the arrest of filmmaker Claude Lelouch when it was first shown. Lelouch was apparently at the wheel, too. An underground classic, hailed as being the greatest car chase ever, simply because it was real.

(via @dlogtnarg)

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(thanks to @mattwilliams & @marwannas)

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All shot from hotels. On three Canon cameras.

More details here.

Via @finnbarrw

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So, Thomas Gayno (@thm_a) at Creative Lab here in New York has been spending too much time with his friends at Larva Labs (they're the guys with whom we created the original Androidify app).

They've been messing around with Kinect and their Androidify avatars. This short, scrappy experimental film (below) points to the magic that is possible. We're working out how we might use this in some fun ways.

Any ideas?

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A good day to dig this one out of a dusty crate and loop it in the background as you watch NASA coverage of the last voyage of Endeavour. 'Space' - an LP by the KLF in 1990 (actually, at the time, Jimmy Cauty and The Orb's Alex Paterson). Produced in a week. Reproduced here in six parts, but available on the web in various places as a complete single free download.

Space takes the listener on a voyage through the solar system from Mercury outwards, with vast distances of empty space between worlds represented by periods of minimalist ambience and near-silence. Synthesisers, excerpts from classical compositions and nursery rhymes (including Twinkle Twinkle Little Star), sinusoidal loops, and communications from space flight controllers are among the sounds used to describe the voyage. Cauty has called Space "a record for 14-year-old space cadets to go and take acid [to] for the first time". (source: Wikipedia)

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Favourite line: 'I wanted to have a race on the monkey bars with him too. He kicked my ass last time.'

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Particularly puzzled that 32 people 'dislike' this clip on YouTube.

Thanks to @finnbarrw for yet again digging this one out.

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It's impossible not to be inspired by this.

'An idea born in unsettled times becomes a feat of engineering excellence.

The most complex machine ever built to bring humans to and from space and eventually construct the next stop on the road to space exploration.'

(Thanks to @adityaanupkumar for the link)

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Well, it seems that the discussion around whether there is value in elevating someone within a creative agency to the role of Chief Innovation Officer is actually more of a heated debate than I thought. I posted a short piece on Friday of last week - 'Do We Really Need 'Chief Innovation Officers' in Ad Agencies? Four of them tell us what they do' - which comprised (literally) four tweets from four of the most respected and prominent CIO-types of the moment: Mullen's Edward Boches, VivaKi's Rishad Tobbacowala, MDC's Faris Yakob and Saneel Radia from BBH. The post was inspired by news that another member of the digerati, David Armano, has just been promoted to a new role at Edelman, as EVP, Global Innovation & Integration (details here).

As Edward Boches (so generously) pointed out, the response to the post was of infinitely higher quality than the post itself (always the intention: unless you're Seth Godin, use blogging to learn, not lecture). To date, twenty-nine super smart people have responded with views and counter-views, and the post has been RT-ed over 100 times.

I thought it might be worth me diving into the comments and opinions and attempting to distil some clarity, all focused through my own relatively well-formed and hyper-biased opinions (which I deliberately kept out of the initial post). So, writing as possibly one of the first ex-CIOs in our industry (another post, another day), here are Ten Things I've Found To Be True about 'Chief Innovation Officers'.

(Note: I use 'CIO' throughout to refer to 'Chief Innovation Officer'; yes, I know it also means 'Chief Information Officer', but hopefully if you've got this far you know this post isn't about the latter. If you're looking for the latter, click here and you'll be on your way shortly. I also use the term CIO to describe similar roles such as Head of Innovation, Executive Director of Innovation, EVP of Innovation, Most Innovative Person In the Agency, and so on).

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1. Only The Innovative Survive: To survive, let alone thrive, agencies must effectively become innovation companies, moving at least as fast as culture (to steal something from Gareth Kay's response). If you think your agency is doing that, you're very lucky. If you don't, what's your plan? Making a CIO responsible for driving the agency there is one plan. There are others. One thing that's clear is that fortune favors the fast. To quote Jobs, 'innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower'.

2. Forget the Title, Focus on the Remit: Not every agency needs a CIO, but every agency needs what a CIO does to be done. Yes, done by everyone if possible; failing that, to at least be led by someone who can bulldoze aside barriers and make shit happen fast. The CIO's role is to instil a culture of innovation within the agency; as Steve Wax says, to draw attention to the essentials of truly innovative work and then create programs and initiatives that get the agency producing that kind of work as quickly as possible. At the Creative Lab we are guided by a simple mantra: 'Know the User, Know the Magic, Connect the Two' (coined by Andy Berndt, who founded the CL). Simply put, this could well be the remit of the CIO: to be responsible for understanding how people are behaving with technology, media and communications, to be at the forefront of understanding how current and emerging technology can deliver magic for users, and to connect the two (all, of course, through the lens of that agency's current or desired client base).

3. If Everyone's Responsible, No One is Responsible: Yes, in a perfect world everyone in an agency would be responsible for both constant internal change and fighting for breakthrough work. In practice, everyone can't be. So someone probably needs to be, even if they are merely the lightning conductor of action for a far wider group (if everyone in your company is, congratulations, you can stop reading now).

4. Innovation Does NOT Equal 'Digital': While much of a CIO's role inside an agency will be focused on removing outdated machinery, people and processes and installing the necessary talent, mind-set and systems from which digital ideas can grow, it's wrong to see the role as *only* about that. It's as much about integration as interactive, as much about people as product, as much about the basics as the experimental. Right resources, right processes, right values, right culture, right partners, right clients - all of these (the 'operating system of the business') are, at least partly, the responsibility of the CIO to get right.

5. Hold Both Maps AND Bayonets: It's impossible to be an effective CIO if you're simply directing others in their work. Strong CIOs will be deeply involved in projects that are pioneering new platforms or processes, or working with new partners. Ideally they will be co-leading them, getting their hands dirty with real, grubby, work. It is impossible to learn and iterate quickly enough to be useful unless you are on the front line. If your CIO is not on the front line, they may well be a fraud. If their currency is PowerPoint, they're definitely a fraud. Remember, 'Making, Not Models'.

6. Be A Revenue Center, Not a Cost Center: It might be unrealistic to expect a newly-minted CIO to be delivering bags of gold to the CEO on Day One. But it is not unfair to expect revenues to flow - directly - from CIO-inspired projects and pitches. If a CIO tries to tell you their role is 'external profile-building', 'speaking at conferences' or 'building the network' then you should be suspicious. It *might* include these, but they are the easy bit, trust me. People in CIO-type roles should be bringing in new business, new talent and new partners to the agency, and directly touching and influencing the best work the agency's doing.

7. CIOs Are Not the Same As CEOs: I fully agree with the point made by Mel Exon (of BBH Labs). Of course, we discussed this many times when we persuaded BBH to allow us to set up BBH Labs in 2008 (our first post, fittingly on April 1st 2009, is here: no tweets, no likes, one comment). Most people would agree that final responsibility for the financial performance of a business rests with the CEO, yet most businesses have a CFO (or similar). If the CEO can drive his or her supertanker of a business as fast as a speedboat then that's awesome work; if they can't then it's super useful to have one (or more) speedboats out in front of the supertanker scouting into the future.

8. Not All CIOs are Created Equal: Just like CEOs or CCOs, not all CIOs will be successful, will know what they're doing, or even should be in the role. Don't be put off by people you may have come across who execute this type of role in the guise of buzzword-wielding buffoons or charlatans, or who attempt to reduce it to a focus on social media or digital. There are so few people to learn from (the five people I mentioned in my original post are a good start, plus Mel Exon), it's better just to focus on what you think is right in your situation, for your business. Ignore anyone who says they're an expert.

9. A CIOs job is Never Done: Unless you think the pace of change is going to settle down any time soon (are you planning a trip to Albania?), it's inconceivable that the role of better equipping agencies to thrive around emerging platforms, processes and partners will ever come to an end. Yes, if successful, others in the agency (including the CEO, CFO and CCO) will become partners-in-crime. But there is always room for the new; indeed, that is at least part of our currency in creative businesses. I disagree with those who suggest the role of the CIO becomes redundant if successful; I believe the opposite to be true.

10. Everything Changes, So Just Start: Don't spend too long plotting out a masterplan for how a CIO (or whatever title or anti-title you deem appropriate) might work in your agency. Because while you're busy PowerPointing together an awesome thesis on why the role matters and what it might look like if and when you navigate the 37 layers of approval to get buy-in, you're simply a gigantic cost. If you're not putting someone's nose out of joint by getting going early, you're probably doing something wrong. If people inside your agency wriggle uncomfortably when you describe what you're planning, you're almost certainly on the right track.

Being 'the pirate within' is by no means always comfortable. The road won't be smooth. Many will want you to fail. It can be lonely. Speedboats can easily become swamped by supertankers. As Machiavelli once noted, there is 'nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things'. Despite all this, I believe it's the best job you can have in an agency; it's certainly one of the most important.

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I was ruminating on David Armano's new role at Edelman, as EVP, Global Innovation & Integration (details here). Armano describes his new role as 'doing what keeps your business on the front line'. There's been a rash of Chief Innovation Officer / Director of Innovation roles within agency groups and holding companies. Indeed, I myself argued strongly for the (at the time) unusual title of Executive Director of Innovation at BBH, back in early 2010. But do we really need them? If so, why? And what do they see as their value to creative businesses?

I asked four of the most prominent and respected of this new mutation of communications professional to try and capture what their role is in a tweet-length summary. This is what they said.

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Edward Boches (Chief Innovation Officer, Mullen)

Opening minds. Inspiring change. Creating unexpected connections. Dissecting cool stuff + re-applying. Sharing. Experimenting.

Saneel Radia (Head of Innovation, BBH New York)

Help BBH NY do what we aren't currently doing but want to. Criteria: make clients & talent happy, be credible.

Faris Yakob (Chief Innovation Officer, KBS&P)

Asking Why? And What If? Instead of How? + When? - Hopeful midwife to new *kinds* of ideas.

Rishadt Tobbacowla (Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer)

Help drive future competitive advantage. Seek fresh insightful connections.

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What do you think? Does your agency have a CIO? If not why not? If so - who is it, and what value do they add? Smoke & mirrors? Or Pirates & Pioneers?

Would love to hear your comments; I'm on a panel next week in NYC about Innovation (details here) and am keen to take the temperature of people in the industry.

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Select 720p HD and hit full-screen.

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Gets fairly mental about a third of the way in.

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A real time recreation of Yuri Gagarin's pioneering first orbit, shot entirely in space from on board the International Space Station. The film combines this new footage with Gagarin's original mission audio and a new musical score by composer Philip Sheppard. For more information visit http://www.firstorbit.org/

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Guy shot a frame every couple of miles all the way from from SF to Paris.

The middle section where he flies through the Northern Lights is more than a little trippy.

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As featured on Gilles Petersen's 'Worldwide' recently.

More about the awesome Ebo Taylor here in this BBC Music profile.

Turn this up.

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Took this yesterday flying in low over Manhattan on way back from Toronto on Air Canada 712.

Not perfect by any means (for example, if I'd have taken it 1.5 seconds later I would have got the Empire State Building mid-picture, as it is now the ESB is blurred).

But shows the potential (& fun) of using Instagram, esp with the new tilt-shift function.

(If Instagram don't send me a t-shirt for this - my 5th post about how awesome they are - I'll switch back to Hipstamatic).

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