Anant’s blog: Watch out for George Michaelides

StrawberryFrog’s Scott Goodson sent me a link over the weekend to the first app for the iPad that his agency has just created.

Scott’s been at the cutting edge of modern communications, helping brands deal with the crazy world of media in an age where consumers are receiving their news and entertainment in ways that we could never have imagined.

A couple of years back, Scott was one of the speakers at Goafest.

And, it must be said, Scott (and Naked’s Jon Wilkins) was someone we had suggested to the Goafest committee when they asked us to suggest speakers.

Since the launch of Campaign India, Goafest 2010 will be the third Goafest.

Each year, as a trade magazine, we do our little bit to help make the event bigger and better.

Last year, we played a small role, in Dan Wieden, Sir John Hegarty and Jean Marie Dru coming to India, in that we suggested it to local managers (W+ K's V Sunil, BBH's Subhash Kamath and TBWA India's Shiv Sethuraman).

This year, we’ve played a small role in getting Publicis' Richard Pinder, Mindshare’s George Michaelides and Grey’s Tim Mellors to first consider, and subsequently agree to, coming to Goa.

Each year since we came to India, we’ve been helping the committee with putting together profiles of the speakers.

Each year, we do our bit in helping adland know what’s happening at Goafest and telling them why they should be there. When we were six months old, defying the odds and against all sense, we brought out a daily printed newsletter which, we believed, made Goafest more fun. We did that the following year as well.

This year, taking a leaf out of Scott’s book, (or is it an e-leaf out of his e-book?) we go totally digital – and, by the end of this week, would have done our little bit in making Goafest and the Abbys bigger and better.

And to kickstart things as we get to the big week, let me provoke you with this one: the showstopper will be the low-profile and unheard of George Michaelides (pictured above). I've met him, had a couple of long chats with him. He's truly scintillating.

And remember, unlike the Abby results, you heard about this first only in Campaign India.