05/30/2008 05:57:24 AM 
Anyone who was there will hopefully echo my views- they were a great bunch.
Creative, inspiring and full of love for the possibilities of the digital world.
They had no time for brands pretending to be their friends, but plenty of time for
brands who helped make them cool.
At one point the session turned into an Apple commercial, nearly all the panelists owned an Apple laptop.
The idea of reading a newspaper in the conventional sense was beyond them, they were somewhat divided on the issue of pirating and intellectual property rights, they hated pop up ads, didn't much like banners on Facebook, but couldn't live without it unless they had to pay a subscription to use it.
According to these guys, we are already in the post-TV age, they were consuming loads of video content from the internet and directly onto their laptops that it had rendered the television irrelevant. They like the idea of watching stuff in their time and without those pesky ads.
Most of them created content in some form, many of them had blogs to share their viewpoints, experiences and to promote themselves and their friends. One of the panelists had even created his own social network.
There were numerous mentions of sustainability and social responsibility and an expectation that corporations should be doing more than grab money.
A big thank you to my amazing panelists; Jessica, Pia, Nick, Chris and James, a huge shout out to Jo and her team at Flamingo who hand picked them, to Jerry McGee at the AAAAs for having the idea and to Paul and Kate at Naked Communications for letting me use their offices for the rehearsal.
Posted by Ed Cotton
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