AAAA planning conference goodness

So the big AAAA planning conference is coming up in a month. And a couple of good things are shaping up.

The first thing is if you’re a junior or intermediate planner with under 5 years experience, Planning For Good (which you can read more about here) is conducting a workshop on the Sunday before the conference starts.

You’ll get to work on actual briefs from two amazing organizations: Kiva.org (the microlender) and Witness (the human rights organization).  You’ll be assigned into teams and competing to develop the best insights, strategies, and solutions to a challenge they set out. Each team will be mentored by a leading planning director from the industry. After a day of working, you’ll present back to a panel that includes the PFG committee and the marketing directors of these two organizations. This all happens on Sunday, so you won’t miss any of the conference. The work with be showcased and presented during the conference and at a PFG event on the Tuesday evening of the conference. 

To participate, sign up for “Real Time Crafting” workshop when you send in your conference application and fees. Also note which cause you wish to work on (Kiva or Witness).

The second thing is the Minneapolis planning crew of Paul Isakson and Kelly Thompson have created a Facebook group for people who are attending the conference so we can make plans and connect beforehand. It will also be a place to discuss the conference as it goes, recap afterwards, and most importantly gossip about who had the best ironic t-shirts, designer sneakers, and funky eyewear (aaahhhh, planner fashion).

Additionally, they’ve proposed a cocktail gathering on Tuesday night at Shore Club’s Skybar for people to hang out and unwind on the last night of the conference. This may also turn into the PFG event. The details and RSVP can be found here.

Looking forward to seeing anyone that’s attending…

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Filed under: planning, planning for good

Depeche planning

This coming Monday April 28th, join the worldwide Planning for Good breatheren for a really cool experiment. Recently, a topic of much discussion has been fast strategy: given today a brand’s speed to market and speed of reaction to events is a big advantage, the need for strategists to be able to generate good ideas faster, with fewer resources, has become a key part of the job. Richard, in typical fashion, has a call to arms on the subject.

On Monday, the UK’s main advertising body, the IPA, is holding a conference on fast strategy. And as part of that, they’re having a live strategy bake-off with some of the UK’s biggest names competing. The contestants will be briefed and given a couple of hours to generate a strategy against a difficult UK government public service brief. PFG’s own lovely and talented Mark Earls is one of the participants. And he’d like to call on the assembled global PFG masses to help. Mark will post the brief online and over the course of 2 hours, we can all help in generating a solution.

The catch is this all happens on London time, so in some parts of the world that may mean getting up early or staying up late.  The brief will be posted at 10am London time (that’s 5am EST, 4am CST, and 2am PST in North America), and responses need to be in 2 hours later by 12pm London time. 

You must be a member of PFG to particpate so if you haven’t already, join up here. 

If you’re interested in joining Mark’s global planning army, shoot me an email – my address is under the “contact me” tab at the top of the page. And if you want more details on the IPA event, Ed Cotton has a full write up over at Influx.

This should be really fun.

Filed under: planning, planning for good

Planning For Good update

Lots of PFG news.  

1) We have an official blog/website.  Check it out at www.planningforgood.org

2) Membership is now up over 1,150 people around the world. Amazing. 

3) A huge thanks to everyone who helped out with the UNICEF brief. Gareth and Ed presented to UNICEF last week and got a really positive response. The presentation will be posted publicly soon.

4) There’s a new brief up for Live Earth. Read about it here or here. Last year’s global series of Live Earth concerts raised awareness around the world for climate change. But as most people know, awareness and change is lagging most in the US. So in 2008 Live Earth wants to reach out to US college students. They want to ultimately reach half of the US undergrad population next year. They’ve asked PFG how to do that. Submissions are due December 17th – local groups are meeting this week and next, check out the blog for details in your city. For those of you in Toronto, we’ll be meeting on Friday Dec 7th for breakfast.

5) Our first PFG event is happening! If you’re in NYC next Monday come on out. I’ll quote Ed here: Next Monday (7-9pm) December 10th, Good Magazine will be hosting an evening for Planning for Good at its pop-up store in Nolita. There will be music by James Friedman, short bursts of inspirational speaking from Graham Hill of Treehugger, Matisse Bustos Hawkes of Witness, Alisa Aydin of UNICEF, Andrew Friedman of Make the Road by Walking and Gareth Kay/Ed Cotton from Planning for Good. There will also be drinking and socializing.”  Space is limited, and priority will go to PFG members – all the more reason to sign up and participate (not that you needed a reason, of course). Sadly, I can’t attend – have a drink for me.

Filed under: planning for good