Director and camera men line up a shot

This shot is taken from behind the scenes on set with Ways to Live Forever. 

It shows the flats of the set – a full downstairs interior of a modern house. More importantly, you can see the height of the Railhead studio space with the eaves of the roof and beams providing an easy method for rigging and lighting.

The shoot is well underway and we’ve had positive feedback for the way Hoults Yard works as a production base – WTLF has its production office, hair/make-up, costume, green room, prop store, tutor rooms and catering all within hards of each other and the set. The yard’s been busy with an extra 30 cars on site, too. All adding to the buzz.

This production coincided with the launch of Northern Film & Media’s new offices in our Kiln building. It provides modern offices with superfast broadband and all the other benefits we offer on the yard: 24 hour security and access, easy parking, on-site cafe, media cluster… Now you can also hope to snatch a glimpse of stars Ben Chaplin, Greta Scaachi, Emilia Fox, too!

After a stint of incubation from me, I’m proud to see an exciting project hatch – great team, fascinating market focus:

Visit the website here: www.wearefutureheads.co.uk

Top digital specialists team up with agency entrepreneur to launch Futureheads

London, 15^th October 2009: Today sees the official launch of Futureheads, a recruitment firm focused on digital media, user experience (UX) design, content, project management and client services. Futureheads’ first hires are senior players who met at Recruit Media before its 2007 merger with Aquent. The business is backed by a well-known agency entrepreneur working in corporate advisory for agencies. Futureheads hits the ground running with one of the most respected teams in the digital market and well-connected backing.

Some of the big names in Digital Britain have already added their voice to the buzz about a solid team that has a track record of getting results for the industry talent: Fortune Cookie MD (and BIMA Chair) Justin Cooke, Richard Titus, CEO of Associated Northcliffe Digital, The Team’s Director of Experience, Jason Mesut and former Head of UX at BBC, Matt Hopgood. 

Futureheads will cover core digital markets across retail, broadcast, publishing, entertainment, telecoms, web and sofware, public sector and agency. Futureheads will grow its coverage of key digital industry niches with dedicated experts in front end development, creative and web editorial.

The Team

The Futureheads team brings together three of the most experienced recruiters in UK digital – delivering deep industry knowledge and a commitment to professionalism for clients and candidates.

Be Kaler Blake is on the council of BIMA, the British Interactive Media Association, and has been responsible for bringing together some of the key user experience teams in the market.

Gill Arnold will concentrate on strategic hire agreements across government and public sector, focussing on content, design and project management. Gill will lead Futureheads’ quality assurance and best practice.

Rachel Murray tracks corporate and agency recruitment – she has a focus on project management and client service roles. Rachel is nurturing new Futureheads joiners to become top quality consultants of the future.

Agency entrepreneur Charlie Hoult has grown a number of businesses in design and digital, notably Loewy Group which he took from 40 to 400 staff in 4 years. He also ran First Tuesday London and a nationwide government programme BeyondBricks to champion digital entrepreneurship.

Team comments

“We start with one of the best networks in London from years in the field. Look at our links with Third Sector Forum, BIMA, UK UPA or Castaway,” says Futureheads Chairman Charlie Hoult. “But, we also start with a work ethic and a twinkle in our eyes: we do the same stuff but better than everyone else.”

“We’ve been on the digital ‘block’ for longer than we care to remember and we make it our business to know where the industry is going,” says Rachel Murray. “We’ve built strong relationships over years – we’ve been overwhelmed by the feedback so far. People come to us because we are totally immersed in the digital space.”

“We understand the importance of good process and QA throughout the recruitment lifecycle” says Gill Arnold. “We really want to raise the standards of recruitment in the digital industry through honesty, transparency and deep industry knowledge.”

Futureheads’ Be Kaler Blake says: “The digital industry is a national asset – it’s one area where the UK is a world beater. Futureheads is here
to nurture the best talent to keep the industry
on top.”

Industry comments

Justin Cooke, Fortune Cookie MD and BIMA Chair, adds: “The team behind Futureheads have helped Fortune Cookie find brilliant, world-class people for the past 8 years. I trust their honesty, transparency and the speed with which they respond to our needs.”

Richard Titus, CEO of Associated Northcliffe Digital, says: “Futureheads is an exciting proposition, having worked with the team closely they are my first port of call when sourcing user experience, design and project management talent. I cannot speak highly enough of them.”

Jason Mesut, Experience Director, The Team, says: “I am keen to use Be at Futureheads for contract and permanent roles going forward. She is the only recruiter I have ever met who gets what I and my peers do, and in a market full of charlatans, I really need to cut through the crap
to find the talent.”

Matt Hopgood, former Head of UX at BBC confirms: “These girls have been my first port of call for both interim & contract staff as well as providing me with my own career opportunities for the last 8 years. In all that time, they have never failed to provide the highest calibre staff and the last job they got me was Head of UX at the BBC and it doesn’t get better than that. Be, Gill and Rachel are diligent, professional, extremely well connected and thoroughly lovely to boot.”

And, thank you to Steph at WilliamJoseph for the branding, Natasha Frangos from HaysMac for accounting advice, Rakesh Patel and Sarah Nichols at RBS, Jane Latham at SteakDigital, Mark Brown at Hoults Yard,

I love the green arguments for reuse over recycling. The old 60s arguments is that it takes 10 years of carbon energy to make a car… so running an old gas-guzzling banger is better than scrapping it and buying a Prius. It’s interesting that the government has, therefore, started a scrappage scheme… it doesn’t hold to a green test! And, it’s also interesting that reuse is part of my kids refrain when they quote Bob the Builder (or is it Engi Bengi?)

And so to trains…

I’ve heard of the Shrewsbury service that’s rivalling Virgin. I’m now sat on Grand Central, the service that runs from Sunderland to London. While National Express has been taken into state control for overestimating its profit-potential, Grand Central is making business with the same model: fixed price fares, old stock, simple service.

Grand Central costs £58 single – where I’ve paid £80+. Their staff feel a sense of mission – they are the challenger brand. The tables have monopoly and draughts in the formica. And, Marilyn Monroe smiles at the end of train graphics. The train is dead old, but neat. Who cares, when you get smiles from the staff who are delighted you are trying their service!

Reusing redundant capacity. Reusing and re-purposing throw-away kit. There’s such an honest appeal to it. Bring it on… it’s going to be big, as the government announces (today) that carbon targets will be written into law.

What’s going to be big in these tough times? There are quite a few pin-up entrepreneurs in search of the next big deal. But, the Hoberman/Birch/Goodwin team seem to be somewhat repeating themselves (or is it just slow journos?)

Sunday Times 9 April talks up the above combo and their European Founders Fund – and it gushes: ‘EFC is being set up with an initial £20m of seed funding, which will rise quickly to £50m’.

FT 10 July has the same combo, the same fund manager, launches PROfounders Capital, and gushes: ‘PROfounders Capital has already raised about $30m and is planning to more than double its size by bringing in other entrepreneurs’.

Groundhog Day? Slow news day for Tim Bradshaw?

Meanwhile, my pick of the start-ups to watch for breakthrough moves this week goes to Antixlabs - they have a games download platform which I hear is going gang-busters. Looks like a strong feature play that could get picked up by a handset manufacturer or operating system developer as part of the AppStore2.0 world.

For NorthEast entrepreneurs, I’m also hearing interesting noises about a start-up bootcamp that might come onstream for September. Start polishing your elevator pitches!

And, down at HoultsYard, we’re just about to launch our very own incubator space – rent a desk for £40 per week with broadband fully wired. We’ve set up 10 desks and already rented 4 of them off the back of networking.

A great article in today’s FT – click here.

Good news for Facebook… but the spectre of Twitter is haunting them… and Google isn’t even in the race.

The basics:

Mark Zuckerberg is founder and boss and still only 25 yrs old

Facebook expects annual revenues to break $500m (with $200m recent new investment, valuation of $10bill)

225m active users

09 annualised growth 125% (against Twitter 1318% – and Myspace 9%)

Interesting to see Microsoft getting out of the agency business – must’ve been too many conflicts created – by selling Razorfish.

http://www.brandrepublic.com/DigitalAM/News/916371/Microsoft-sell-digital-agency-Razorfish/?DCMP=EMC-Digital-AM-Bulletin

The world of corporate finance is, I hear, having a great recession as finance houses help corporates (and governments) to adapt to the ‘new rules’.

We’ll wait to see if this recession is a double-dipper… people are saying to me that things are running out of steam, but we’re certainly not seeing that in my portfolio.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a host of artists and start-up entrepreneurs looking to build their endeavours out of the downturn. It’s extremely exciting to hang out with these creative people and to see what projects we can collaborate on.

Even more exciting is the fact we can offer people their own desk, workspace or studio from £30 per person per week. Where else can you get a desk, wifi, light, heat, rent, rates, service, security… all for less than £6 a day? And, this doesn’t include all the benefits of hanging out with like-minded people!

Have a quick look at this link – from a Newcastle twitter photo group (thanks to Paul J White):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pauljw/3574565594/

I’m not the first person to spot that JP Rangaswami has an interesting perspective on all things digital and sociological. I heard him at the recent Thinking Digital conference along with a host of other fascinating zeitgeist readers.

He’s on this blog:http://www.confusedofcalcutta.com/ 

Pretty interesting perspectives for those trying to identify what the parameters are for the Next Big Thing. Interesting that it’s not blogging. Interesting that, since the start of this blog, it’s all gone off RSS and onto Twitter. I’m excited about Twitter and learning the ropes on @opencast. It really is a breakthrough platform.

But, it makes me yet more fascinated by real life. The Thinking Digital conference was amazing for the way the wifi and Twitter feed tracked live against the speakers… adding a totally new dimension to the event.

This, with the death of newspapers (oh, yeh, but…), makes it wide open to entrepreneurship and disruption for the future of information exchange. Next up… my thesis on brokerage, the value of networks and the cost of transactions.

In the converged world of knowledge businesses, is there any difference between a corporate finance broker, an analyst, a journalist, a trainer, a lecturer… not much, save the price they recover per interaction.

Hmmm… bring me back to the Roman Forum, Mr Lloyd’s coffee shop, First Tuesday… or see you at 1 Alfred Place…

TED is a pin-up business for the digital generation – it’s the ‘Davos Summit’ for the digerati. 

It’s holding TED Europe in June in Oxford. It has a massive following for its talks videos online.

But, how does one expand the business model? …by franchising.

TED is now allowing a number of conferences to licence its brand as TEDx – clever stuff. Is it part of expanded philanthropy or is it viral expansion?

There’s one in Newcastle coming up later in Sept 2009. This one is being run, I believe by Codeworks, who put together the fantastic Thinking Digital event last week.

Inspiring stuff…

I’ve just heard Johnny Lee talking through his student day inventions – hacking together a projector, a Wii remote and his laptop to create a low cost interactive white board (for sub £50), a 3-D screen experience and more.

Check out his videos – 12m Youtube views, so almost as popular as Lauren Luke…

The big thing for the future is to create sensory environments – flat screens that feel like you are pushing buttons or creating physical sensations of touch to recreate objects virtually. Hmmm.