So are the days of my life

Ever since that fateful day in 2004, when South Africa heard that we were to host the FIFA World Cup^TM, 2010 was always going to be a big year. As a nation, we’ve been waiting for this year for what feels like eternity, speaking about it in hushed tones, the word “2010″ enough to convey promise, nation-building, riches beyond our wildest dreams…

… so can someone tell me why everyone failed to mention that it would be so effing busy!! The year barely started and I was totally swamped, head-spinning, feet twisting, hair flying BUSY! But this you know, if you have spoken to me IRL (in real life) or online this year, all I can say is how busy I am. Yes, I know you are sick of it, sorry, when you’re working hard, it’s hard to talk about anything else cos you aren’t doing anything else… capeesh?

So let me take this rare Saturday morning when I’m not working/shopping/doingsomethingformyfamily/working/travelling to bring everyone up to speed with just 3 of the thousands of things I have been doing. I had better do it quickly, cos I have a 5 year old’s birthday party to attend and then I’m seeing a friend I haven’t seen in so long I have forgotten what she looks like. And tomorrow I am going to try and tame the monster that is my inbox. Um, what was I supposed to be telling you again?Oh yes….

1. It is pitch season

Now, never having worked at an agency before Quirk, I never understood what this statement meant. For you non-agency types, let me explain: Pitch season happens when a whole wack of South Africa’s big brands suddenly decide that it’s time to get a new agency. I personally believe they collude to do this at the exact same time, so that they can watch as the agencies forgo such luxuries as sleep, hygiene and sanity and clamour madly for their business.

Pitch season means your brain is pushed harder than you thought possible, as the pitch team in an agency come up with the most amazing kick-ass ideas, do hot creative mockups for these ideas, put them into a powerpoint presentation (have I mentioned how much I HATE powerpoint??) and then present them to the potential client in hope that you will blow their grey socks right off their corporate feet and leave them wondering how they managed without you for so long. Usually you don’t have much time to prepare these pitches. And it’s not like your normal workload goes away or anything. AND, time doesn’t magically stretch to accommodate all this. So how the hell do you get all of this done? you ask…

You don’t sleep. You sit around a boardroom table with cold pizza, balled up pieces of paper, hundreds of post-it notes, and other people just as tired as you, and you push your mind beyond it’s limits until 03h30 in the morning… for at least 2 nights per pitch. You time your team as you all rehearse for the gazillionth time so you don’t go over your strictly controlled presentation time limit. Sometimes you have an unplanned powernap (i.e. pass-out) in a chair in front of your CEO, Chairman, Creative Director and 2 members of your board at 12h30 (long story).

Then, before you know it, you’re standing in front of them. Bleary eyed and dizzy, but pumped. And you present your ideas, you sell yourself and you try to convey to them the passion that you will put into their brand if they appoint you. And before you know it, it’s all over. And then you wait…

2. Mzan.si went live

So, when tasked to put together some ideas for our client, South African Tourism, for their 2010 marketing, we had a brainstorm. And one of Quirk’s biggest brains, Scott Gray (who is a ginger so is obviously awesome), came up with the idea of a South African URL shortener. There are loads of URL shorteners out there, but there has never been one created for a country before. SA Tourism is known for their innovation online (The 1st tourism Google Earth layer in the core of Google, etc) so this fits perfectly with them, and will hopefully live way beyond 2010. I thought it would be so funky, as a South African, to have my country represented every time I shorten a URL. It’s another, subtle way of getting the name of this little place at the bottom of the world to be recognised by the big bad world. And I like using ‘Proudly South African’ products, so I dug the idea. And so did SAT, and so did the awesome, scary smart team of software engineers, designers and coders at Quirk.

So we built it. We’d never built one before, but I think we did a flippen great job. You can do all sorts of cool things with it, so register and try it out. And if you find any bugs, or have any feedback for improvements – there is a cool feedback form on the tool, the email inbox of which I am personally checking. So thank you to the Quirk team, who constantly amaze me, and to the SAT team for having the vision. It’s a little tool, it’s not going to change the world – but I’m proud of it. And that’s all that matters to me.

Oh – yes… you can see it here: http://mzan.si

3. I’M GETTING A MAC!

Yes, you read right. As an ex-graphic designer, I’ve always loved macs, always wanted one. They run better, faster and with less crashes than a PC. They have longer battery lives and are designed with the user in mind, as the best tools are, and they are an extension of every good designer’s body and mind. And then I became a geek and no self-respecting geek doesn’t have a mac so I wanted one even more. But I’m bad at saving money and macs, well, they’re not cheap. So I made do with a string of PCs – don’t get me wrong, I have no problems with PCs – I feel really at home on a PC and I’m just happy to have a laptop to be honest.

That doesn’t mean the shiny brushed aluminium piece of art with the glowing apple in the centre hasn’t always made me drool though. So much so that at the 1st GeekRetreat, Brett Haggard was convinced I was going to make off with his in the night. As with most things, I’m pretty vocal about my desire for a macbook. I don’t ask or demand or whine, I just quietly sigh and lovingly caress one every time I see one. It seems people noticed and to my partial pleasure and partial embarrassment, they all told the King Ginger – Rob Stokes – that I was such an adoring mac fan-girl that I have a mac-like object dock on my PC and I even had an apple desktop background for a while (I know, I know… I’m pathetic).

So when my laptop battery exploded in a shower of sparks (ok, not really, it just stopped working), I asked for a new battery. Imagine my surprise when I got told that I’m getting a macbook as a replacement. I don’t know why. I can only assume they want to shut me and every one of my ‘Get Heidi a Mac’ lobbyists up. But I’m so excited I think I may pee in my pants.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you THANK YOU to Rob, Mary and Janine!!! I’m hopefully getting it on Tuesday morning. I will be tweeting, twitpiccing and generally shouting from the hilltops, so you will see it.

So, now you know a little of what I have been up to. There are big things in store for me and for Quirk Jozi this year – I just feel it. So you may not hear from me very often, but I’ll check in with an insanely long blog post like this one every now and then, so you know I haven’t become a monk and moved to Siberia.

Bye for now!