It’s been a busy month of November so far, celebrating one year in London, starting new campaigns, moving out of my flat, having friends over… One thing I had time for though (but which did make the month a bit busier) was concerts. I used to go to a lot of them and it had been a few quiet months on that front. But old habits came back with a bang with the colossal Resistance Tour by Muse which I attended twice (both in London at the O2 arena and in Paris at the POPB). We discussed this for hours with friends (beforehand and afterwards) dreaming of our favourite setlist (our favourite Muse setlist would probably involve a 5 hours set! not very do-able). On my way back to London it got me thinking and I started extending the concept, dreaming of my perfect festival.

And I remembered that a friend of mine, Mr Omneo recommended me the Sony Fantasy Festival a few days before.

The whole point of the Festival is to create your perfect festival line-up with virtual money. You then have to create buzz around it in order to win prizes. To be fair I don’t really care about the prizes and the buzz part of it. I did spent an interesting time creating the line-up though: loved choosing the artists, creating my stages with like-minded artists, customising the colours, getting frustrated that some artists/bands I like don’t really fit with my line-up or simply are just dead, discovering friends’ line-up etc…

I wish Sony Fantasy Festival had pushed the experience even further: why not give us the opportunity to choose our dream festival venue? or time? I don’t know about you but I’d love a festival which would see Muse playing on the first level of the Eiffel Tower one month and then Arcade Fire on a beach in Scotland 3 weeks later and the XX playing Tokyo at night two weeks later. If it’s fantasy let’s make it complete!

Anyway… go check it out for yourself and maybe you’ll have as much fun as me.

Dot Dot Dash

• online PR
• Social Media – Community Programme
• Social Media – Outreach

Of course I have no idea if we’ll win but these three nominations are already an achievement. I’m feeling rather emotional right now, so I’ll spare you the speech but these are good news that deserve to be celebrated.

Fingers crossed and good luck to all nominees!

The ceremony will take place on the 19th November, which happens to be the exact date I started at We Are Social last year. Rather nice way to celebrate isn’t it?

-Ford This is Now just celebrated its first anniversary!
-I have been working on some more stuff for Ford on the Go Find It project. Check it out, it’s cool and there’s hard work behind it.
-Additionally I’ve written a few blog posts for work:

• 19% of tweets mention a brand
• Let me entertain you

After almost a year in London, I’m (finally) leaving for hols in a few days. See you when I’m back!

My uncle is an illustrator for kids. His latest project Lulu’s Islands (les Mistigris in French) is an animated series for children that will premiere on 5 October 2009, on the TFou channel (TF1 network) (it will show every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Fridays at 7:10 am). The show uses cutout animation, and is targeted to children aged two to six.

The show was created by uncle Denis Cauquetoux and Nathalie Dargent and written by Valérie Baranski and Nathalie Dargent.

It follows the adventures of Lulu, a mischievous tomboy kitten (and heroine of the show) and her friends on the archipelago called the Wonderlees. One day, Lulu meets the first human ever to land on their shores: Peppy (or Pépin), a young shipwreck survivor.

Can’t wait to have a look!

Anyway all of that to say that I might have found a game as legendary as laser-tag is. It uses a fake office space (your boss behaves like Michael Scott and you dream of having your revenge? well, here’s your chance!), Nerf guns and loud music. You battle your way through the space against the opponents. It’s safe of course as Nerf bullets are made of foam.

Sounds fun? well have a look at some of the vids that were made by teams of bloggers from Paris.

Additionally a web series will be posted every week on Dailymotion until the 31st of September. It’s called Guerre des Nerf (War of the Nerf(s)). It’s fun and geeky. Check it out.

Since I joined We Are Social and got an iPhone (the two are unrelated) I’ve been spending quite a lot of time on Twitter.

I’ve been sharing my geeky tweets about life, the universe and everything, documenting my daily adventures in London and Europe, sharing “worthy” links and been keeping in touch with friends.

I’ve started following some interesting people, people who have something to say about the things that fascinates me.

On Saturday I came upon a link from @carol_phillips, a marketing professor at University of Notre Dame and her blog http://www.millennialmarketing.com/. Carol is a specialist in the Gen Y, otherwise called the Millenials.

I was somewhat familiar with the idea of Gen Y but surprisingly I had never studied it in depth when I was in gradschool, which to be honest seems like an aberration considering that

1) I was in a business school

2) my speciality was e-marketing

But anyway, we can’t all be perfect and it’s never too late to learn.

Carol links to a bunch of interesting articles about Gen Y and the various studies that have been published on the subject but there is one article that I’ve been mulling over and over since Saturday and it is the New York magazine’s article What the class of 2009 Graduates think about the world they inherited.

Obviously this is an important issue, especially for someone like me who was born in 1984 (as a reminder, Generation Y is the generation following Generation X, especially people born between 1980 to 1988). Oh and to answer your question yes I graduated in 2009.

During its limited years on Earth, the Class of ’09 has endured more than its share of insults from the older generation—condemned as MySpace narcissists and entitled lazy-asses, not to mention hookup addicts and/or rainbow-party attendees. Worse, having come of age traumatized by 9/11 and the ugly war that followed, they are graduating just as the economic bubble pops. Who could blame these new graduates if they were, as a demographic slice, feeling put-upon, even downright bitter?

New York Magazine puts 9/11 and the war that followed as one of the key event to understand the Gen Y. And I do agree that my generation became of age when these events were broadcasted on our tvs or to be more accurate on our MySpace/Blogs/Favourite Bitorrent client but is that really true for the European Gen Y?

The class of 2009 European graduates grew up in a world where the key event was an expanding EU system. I was a teenager when Schengen was put in place, I had just graduated high-school when we started using the Euro, I was given the chance to leave my university and go study at University of Sussex for a year because of the Erasmus system. Some of my friends now work all over Europe in European institutions and it only seems natural for me now to be living abroad and go travelling all over Europe whenever I have a free day.

But is that sufficient to define us? We don’t really have anything else specific that could set us apart from the other generations…

We grew up in mixed economic times: of course we had the digital bubble of the early 00′s but apart from that it was always: unemployement-unemployement-unemployement. We grew up in a time when the West/URSS divide had already collapsed, a time when some major achievements had already been… well achieved, where naive optimism and younger rebellion were frowned upon (come on… 68 already happened, what else new could we have to bring to the debate?).

For me Generation Y is probably a nice way to label the people we can’t really define, the one that are between generations. We didn’t grow up in a time where technology is as natural as everyone claims it to be (that is going to be for the next generation, for example my little cousins who are 12).

Of course I recognize myself in some of the traits defined by the articles about Gen Y. Yes I think we have a short-attention span, that companies need to be more flexible to adapt to the way we are functionning and yes I’m close to my parents and don’t mind spending time with them.

But what results from these musings is that Gen Y is a generation that need to be told it matters.

We were brought up in a conflicting post-Dolto world where we’re everything to our baby-boomers parents but where the rest of the world didn’t really care. We’re exposing ourselves all over the internet, sharing our lives on Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, making friends on Social Networks, ranking them and basically sending the message across:

Tell me I matter, listen to what I’m saying, are you interested… am I interesting enough?

The project was launched in mid-September and is now in its 9th month. I think the results speak for themselves, have a look at the presentation!

The great news as well is that the Fiesta has just been awarded the Red Dot Award for product design, one more proof that the Fiesta really is all about “now”!

Muse’s Resistance tour was announced on the 1st of June on Muse official Twitter.

Since then, @yeahitsjames called for a #museday to celebrate the start of the sale and the common excitation.

As a result Muse is now one of the top 10 topics on Twitter.

All the tickets for the UK dates are already sold out (it went on sale this morning at 9AM), and tickets for the French dates are going quick.

So I have only one thing to say happy #museday everyone and see you in the 02 arena on the 12th of November as well as in the Palais Omnisport de Paris Bercy on the 17th.

The last few months have been mostly TV deprived as I have been pretty busy with life and work. Of course I had some time to watch the so-so 4th season of How I Met Your Mother, the cheesy cancer-driven soap Grey’s Anatomy or the not-so-inspired season 2 of Ashes to Ashes.

Two shows, though, have gotten me talking.

Of course one of them is Joss Whedon’s baby Dollhouse.

This one was tricky. I’m a long time Whedon’s fan but I was not convinced by any of the first episodes. At all. It was painful to watch. And I was thoroughly disappointed. Eliza Dushku’s acting skills made me cringe. But I sticked with it. First of all because duh it’s Joss. Secondly because everyone was raving about it (including MeToo and a couple of my friends). And finally because I knew that the ever so wonderful Alan Tudyk and Amy Acker would steal the show away (not to mention the supporting cast Tahmoh Penikett, Enver Gjokaj, Dichen Lachman).

Now that I’ve been through the first series, I’m really glad Fox (for once) didn’t play dumb and actually managed to make a good decision by renewing the show for a second series. Over the years I had many grievances against them as they kept breaking my poor fan heart and stomping all over it with ski boots. But I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt this time.

The second show that I’ve been very excited about is the pretty and shiny Mad Men. The second season finale was spectacular. I can’t wait for season 3 to start again in August. And if you’re anything like me, you probably won’t be able to resist clicking the following link and watch the trailer of the nex season.

When moving to England a French expatriate lands on a different planet.

The healthcare system seems to lack the reassuring security we have back home, holidays and Bank Holidays are almost non-existent, RTT sound like a joke. You always end up shortening your education because honestly, the Classes Prepa and the whole University/School divide is way to complicated to even start with. The Tube has the speed of a drowsy turtle (when it’s not closed for engineering work) and is damn expensive. And don’t even get me started on the whole TV schedule. Why are the movies starting at 6 or at 10pm and end up being cut by the news? What happened to the sacro-saint 8pm news? Did they drowned in the Thames on the way to the BBC?

However over here, shops and restaurants don’t take you for granted and you actually win back your rights as a consumer. You don’t get abused by angry and moody waiters. And it’s not too hard to find food on a Sunday. The lack of administrative queues is a real revolution as well. Here you don’t have to wait anywhere. You don’t have endless hours of forms and duplicates to fill in. You call, take a rendez-vous or do it online and it works. Even the post-office is great: can you imagine that the collecting point for packages and the general post-office are at different place as to avoid queues? Sounds genius eh? Taxes are done straight at the source, it’s great because honestly I tend to be lazy and I don’t want to ever have to fill in French taxes form.

Then there is the whole Voting System.

One of the greatest day of my life was when I became old enough to vote. I remember clearly the first time I voted. Presidential election 2002 (yeah it was the infamous Chirac-Le Pen round)

The whole business is pretty serious (just take a look at the French electoral code to get a taste). When you move houses, you have to register at the mayor’s office before the 31st of December so as to be able to vote the following year. You have to prove many things, including your citizenship, give your ID, birth registrar and probably a proof of address. It always takes place on Sunday so people don’t have to take time off work to vote. And as a result, voting days are frenetic. With endless hours of debates and polls at the polling station. Rumours. And of course everyone is anxiously waiting for the ceremonial 8 pm reveal.

When you get into a polling station they check your ID, hand you an envelope in which you’ll put the leaflet of the person/party you want to vote for. You get behind the curtain. Then they check one more time your identity. You put your ballot in, then sign. Or more or less in that order. In my polling station in Paris there is at least 6 persons to check that this process is well-respected. Of course there has been problems in the past, one of the most famous being Jean Tibéri famous vote-rigging in Paris 5th district. But overall, it works very well.

Over here in London voting sounds like a practical joke.

First you register online. So far so great. Your local council send you a form to sign. You send it back. And then… nothing.

You don’t receive any leaflet. Or polling card. Or information of any kind.

I woke up this morning and I realised that people were talking about voting and polling stations on twitter.

Moment of panic. Where was I supposed to go?

I dug up old papers I received back in November and decided to try my luck and show up at a polling station close to my flat.

I was lucky enough, it was the right one and I was indeed registered.

But then it got worse.

They didn’t even ask me for my ID.

I was handed a folded paper with lines. Just had to cross the line I was interested in (I had received no official candidates leaflet and there was no information outside of the polling station). I put the paper in the box and left. No signature, no one checked I voted. the opening of the box is so big I could have taken someone else paper and leave.

I’m left sceptical.

I’m curious to know the abstention rate in England. If I thought it was bad in France, I’m pretty sure it’s worse over here….

So follow qwghlm’s advice and whether you’re in England, in France or in any other European country GO VOTE!

For interesting pictures of voting in France, check out Whisperfoto Flickr set: here