A taste of Goa, a taste of things to come

We went to the venue yesterday afternoon to see Martin’s team from Seventy looking for things they’d overlooked. And Colvyn Harris, Bhaskar Das and Madhukar Kamath looking for things Seventy might have overlooked.

Went to the venue this morning, and Goafest hasn’t been better. The organization of Goafest, that is. Everything done, not a wire or cable out of place. The bars stocked (there’s no Old Monk, though). The airconditioning at the seminar hall is like an oasis in the middle of the Sahara. Every thing works like clockwork.

Except for the serious stuff, the conclave, which is running about half an hour late. I’ve got back to my room at The Leela to check that everything’s going well. Everything is.

Now for the revelation. We’ve been experimenting on the dotcom with video for the past couple of months, uploading TVCs onto Youtube.

Now we’ve got a Vimeo account which means, as far as you are concerned, higher resolution video.

Now we’re moving beyond TVCs. In a few hours from now, you’ll see the first of Campaign India’s videos.

Watch JWT’s Michael Maedel as he talks about the state of the industry, the effect of the downturn on consumer behaviour,  the threat from indie digital shops and his thoughts on India in the downturn.

In the next few days, you’ll see many interviews.

And from now on, this will be a regular feature on the dotcom.

Now the conclave has begun, with Colvyn Harris making his introductory remarks. The attendance is hot: Sam Balsara, Lara Balsara, Piyush Pandey, Mahesh Chauhan, Pratap Bose, Prashant Pandey, Nandan Sreenath, Shashi Sinha, Ragothaman Gowthaman, Vikram Sakhuja, Suman Srivastava, Rajiv Jaitly, Rahul Jauhari – these were the ones who walked in as I started writing this. More, I’m sure, later.

It’s getting hotter. Watch this space. We’ll keep you in the loop.