Cannes Lions Day Three: Bindu’s blog

I have a theory about Cannes, which is that the less you sleep, the more wired you are the next day. The days I manage to get a substantial amount of sleep (which is five hours), it’s a slow start to the day and I feel like a zombie. Two hours of sleep and perfect, the day is off to a fine start!
The shortlists for Cyber and Design are declared in the morning and it’s off to the press centre for rapid fire tweeting and report filing. Then it’s off to the press room, for results of Radio, Outdoor, Media Lions. One in Radio, six in Outdoor and eight in Media. Total tally of metals for India till now are 16, which is heartening. Media has done exceptionally well, it had 11 shortlists which it managed to convert into eight metals. I spot Raj Nayak near the Press Centre. He is here with his family, and there are a couple of IAA meetings lined up.  Prasoon, busy with judging Titanium and Integrated, also passes by.
I meet R/GA’s Bob Greenberg, Nick Law and Karen Speigel for lunch at the Carlton’s Beach restaurant. For those living in Siberia, Bob’s agency created the Nike+ application, and we have a conversation about R/GA, Kerala as a holiday spot and Amsterdam, among other things. Bob, alongwith HP’s Michael Mendenhall, will be talking tomorrow at the Debussy theatre on the theme ‘Marketing in the Cloud.’ Look forward to it.
I bump into Gunn Report’s Donald Gunn and his colleague Emma Wilke at the Palais. Always a pleasure to meet Donald and after a brief chat, I run off to file my stories. I bump into my colleagues from London, Suzanne Bidlake and Noel Bussey at the press centre and they are obviously more stressed than I am, since they are doing video, as well, besides reporting for print and online.
I miss the Naked session chaired by Paul Woolmington, because there are too many press conferences clashing during that time. I head off to the Opening Gala, where I meet the Publicis bunch and after three hours of doing absolutely nothing there, its off to Gutter Bar. Long night ahead.