I think we would all agree if I say what an exciting, fun an inspiring project has ended on the platform.

Six weeks of green and white, six weeks of howling wolves, scoring babies, fan dogs (fanimals?), self made bird houses and and and and… an endless list of super fun and original ideas that make a true fans heart beat faster! I would say you deserve a big applause but that would look probably really silly if everyone now starts clapping in front of their computers. So instead I just say a big thank you for making this work so well and a thumbs up for everyone!

I quote the client:  ”Es hat großen Spaß gemacht, den Wettbewerb zu verfolgen und sich immer wieder von den Designern überraschen zu lassen.” – “ It was great fun to follow the contest and being surprised by the designers again and again.”

You can read more (in german) here and also here - thanks bonibom for posting it under the briefing.

And now, on to the ones who scored the most community stars:

• The Golden medal goes to: Ruven and Kathi87 . They prooved that a good game depends on how a team works together. And so they created the VfL FANPASTA:

• Silver goes to yet another great team:  Paolaoliva and Marcomarotto cared about keeping your drinks cool with style – or your hurt knees! VfL FreezeFan came second:

• And the Bronze we all decided to give to the animated hoodie from Architempo. Congratulations on your first win – double win! Great work with Awaken the wolf in you:

• Another first win we saw with Svenja aka sp29. Joins jovoto – submits 3 ideas in a contest – wins. That’s an impressive introduction, the “Fütterunszeit” bib made it to the fourth place! Congratulations!

• 5th place goes to Janne and Oxelot who managed to stay on the top for long with Mmmh – wolsfburgelicious!

• On the 6th we have Architempo again, with yet another fabolous fashion item, the VFL Collar Hoodie 
• 7th came the witty idea of Xavier, Pillow cover – helping you to nice dreams about your favorite team
•  Nr.8: Wanda_Tag with the most adorable collection for baby fans, VFL Welpen
  
• For a nice wake up call we have additios alarm clock The wolf call - on 9th position
• And last but not least the danjohals creation the Wolf Whistle came 10th.

Well, what can I say. You provided the client with a great big pool of items to chose from.
And we are just as excited about the outcome as you are!

Thanks all!

Let’s have a look at the top 10 community winners and see how they completed the task.

1.) Deutschlands bester Brötchengeber ⚐ by kaptnkaptn’s idea is to target potential, well educated candidates there where they learn: At the universities. Building on the wordplay (Brötchengeber=the hand that feeds you)  the target groups receives in the morning bakery bags which advertises mobile.de. The bags can advertise the open positions and can be distributed at certain universities. Nice idea, congratulations kaptn!

2.) saubere autos . saubere jobs by extratain

saubere autos, saubere job is a guerilla campaign idea. Extratain is suggesting to put a stencil on dirty or dusty places and on a car, also a stamp can be used. By the stencil or the stamp the mobile.de logo, claim and the landing page link will appear where people wouldn’t expect it.

3.) mobile.interview by xavier

Thank you guys! Again, it was a huge fun to work with you!

We will share the client’s feedback as soon as possible! For those who can’t wait to get a first impression, check out the interview with jury member Corinna Rumph on the W&V blog.

Hey there,

We felt what better day than today to ask some questions to get the proverbial creative juices churning and your brains’ storming about our latest project from garden unique, Dining Outdoors.

So as the title suggest the major question we have is, what in fact does dining outdoors mean to you?

This may seem like a simple answer- you quickly imagine a picnic or over a campfire straight away. Or do picture a chic rooftop looking over a twilight skyline?

But that’s exactly the point! Depending on where you come from and your culture, you could have very different opinions of your ideal outdoor dining experience. In some cultures it’s standard practice to eat outside and in some perhaps it seems like a bother or on the other hand, it’s very exclusive. But that’s up to you to decided who your target group is.

While your brainstorming:

• Figure out who you are making this product for. (eg- culture, age, accessibility)
• How can you optimize and get the most the experience for your target group (what are they interested in, what would they want to see?)
• How you get your furniture or product outdoors in the first place?
• Think practicality and usability!
• And last but certainly not least, think DESIGN!

Yesterday jovoto had the very exciting chance to present the Theater Inter-Action! project at the re:publica 2012, only one of the biggest and most well known conferences in today’s german digital society!

Our presentation was kicked off by German actor, Bernd Moss with a really nice and funny introduction.

His proposal (although less in depth as yours!)  was to combine web 2.0 and the theater by being a hologram on stage. He went on to say that in reality he was actually at home drinking Club Mate and eating potato chips controlling his hologram with a joy stick from his couch. Although this picture doesn’t look far off from a hologram- he was really there!

From there, our Creative Stratigist, Conradin Mach-Sonnenberg and Birgit Lengers of the German Stage Assosciation (Deutscher Bühnenverein) gave an overview of the Theater Inter-Action! project for the audience.

Here is one of the slides that was presented that breaks down and categorizes all of the submissions into 10 groups.

After that, representatives from the five theaters of Theater Baden Baden, German Theater Berlin, Theater Freiburg, Saarländisches State Theater Saarbrücken, Schauspiel Stuttgart and  Theater an der Parkaue Berlin made 5 theories and used jovoto submissions to support or discuss their points! Pretty cool, huh!?

The 5 theories included:

1. Theater is not a medium discussed on the example of cloudtells’ idea Social Media Theatre, gusmonk’s Naked City Invisible You and joanaf’s flashmob the play
2. It’s all about the intermediation and not about the content discussed by the idea News Theater by boscutti
3. The more bulky art is allowed to be, the more the advertising has to catch on has been discussed based on the ideas from Popular TV series live in Theater by jelenasaurus,  Theater in die Kaufhäuser! by isar and New Theater on the Way by allysquare.
4. How mobil does theater have to be: Telescopic by julijaline and Nocturnal Theater Truck gusmonk.
5. Which picture of the theaters do the ideas reflect?

We were also delighted to have a last minute visit from our community member, MikaR who presented his submission, Got it? So use it! . MikaR was invited as the jury’s pick.

Last but not least, Conradin presented the community winner idea Stage 2.0 from FilipGavril. Then a brief discussion followed with a questions from the audience.

So there you have it! A very exciting follow up at a VERY cool and well respected conference yesterday in Berlin.

Well done to all of our community members that participated and helped us to make a great a project to present!

Parador is a manufacture for flooring and wall design. Founded in 1977 in Coesfeld, Germany their exclusive Parador product range included around 2500 items in 2010 and another 800 new products were added in 2011. Almost three quarters of the turnover is generated with products that are less than three years old.

In the past Parador has already worked with top personalities from the international design scene, such as Zaha Hadid, Karim Rashid, Matteo Thun and Jean Nouvel. Check out their work here! The success from the cooperations with these designers is being proven by the fact the company has won international design prizes like the AIT Award (Interior Innovation Award) and the reddot Design Award.

Now Parador is asking the jovoto community to find creative ideas for excellent and fascinating flooring concepts!

All further information on the project will be included in the briefing which is coming up soon. To start your brainstorming already, here are some starting questions:

• How will flooring look in the future, what are possible colors, shapes, patterns, surface structures and materials?
• What is the next step in flooring, and in particular, wooden and laminate flooring?
• What are the ideal properties for the flooring of the future?
• What additional benefits/functions, such as lighting, sensor technology & etc. could the flooring offer?
• What should the flooring look like in regard to sustainability aspects?
• What new challenges arise from the changing landscape of home and living?

The project will start on May, 2nd 2012. The community prize money total is 15,000 EUR.

The last 10 days of the submissions phase in the mobile.de – Your Next Job project are running. For the final countdown we asked Mirko Kaminski one more time on his opionion on your submissions. Mirko Kaminski is CEO at achtung! an Agency with experts in Advertising, PR, Online and Social Media from Hamburg and jury member in this project. So let’s listen up what he has to say:

Dear Community,

Nothing short of fantastic news, Dining Outdoors is the latest project from garden unique- they also provided us with the extremely successful & exciting project Garden Goes Balcony.

I bet that’s music to all of your creative senses so I’ll get on with explaining your part in this awesome project!

The Task

Develop items that are perfectly suited to a culinary event in the outdoors. From furniture that can be conveniently moved around and transported, to a sunshade for a picnic with family or friends, down to an outdoor kitchen, seating or shade for the professional and exclusive catering needs of a larger group. Show how your design and the occasion come together to create a unique experience!

Background

spoga+gafa is the world’s leading exhibition of the garden industry. It takes place annually in late summer (2 – 4 September 2012) in Cologne. A special feature of spoga+gafa is the premium range of unique outdoor furniture, which was developed together with leading manufacturers. In a spacious atmosphere manufacturers, retailers and designers can share the latest trends and innovative ideas. The project results will be presented in a central issue in international exhibitors and visitors, and published in an exclusive idea book.

The Expert Jury & Prizes

The project is accompanied by a prominent jury. In addition to Patrick Nadeau (Architect: Products for Authentic) and Marc Sadler (designer of outdoor products for Slide, Serralunga, Magis, Skitsch, Pedrali) the expert team also includes Herbert Seckler (CEO of SANSIBAR Sylt), Tobias Lutz (architonic.com), Ralf Ferdinand Broekmann (Chief editor of the build-Magazine) and Rüdiger Sprave (Event Manager imm cologne, spoga+gafa koelnmesse).

In addition to the expert Jury, there is also a total of 12.000 EUR in Community Prize money and another 3 Jury prizes at 1.000 EUR each. But the most amazing perk is that as a Jury prize winner, a protoype will be made of your design and desplayed at the spoga+gafa!!

Looking Back –  Success!

Part of what made Garden Goes Balcony so exciting is the edge of tangibility and realness that exhibiting your prototype at the spoga+gafa brings to the project. Just like the 3 Jury winners last year, the 3 Jury winners in 2012 will be exhibited there as well. Let’s take a look at the prototyps from last years jury winners, Tim_Kerp, furnituresig & yuton and anonimusarh.

anonimusarh with “Shade“

furnituresig and yuton with “go wild in the urban jungle!“

Tim_Kerp with “Sight“

And great news, because Tim_Kerp was able to keep the prototype he is now in manufacturing talks with 2 different companies in Germany & Japan. Very exciting and good luck!

In case you haven’t seen it yet – we have an intriguing new project on the platform for Tablet Hotels. The task is nothing less than to completely rethink hotels, as in how can hotels connect people?

So what is this all about?

Think about how many hotels tend to cut down on social space out of cost efficiency (and because they don’t see its potential) – lobbies get smaller, dining rooms lose their atmosphere, waiting areas are little inviting… hotel guests will want to spend less and less time in the common spaces. Now this contest is not only about reviving common spaces and making them more pleasant again – this time we want to take it one step further: besides wanting them to spend more time in the common spaces, we intend to connect travelers and locals, and we want people to really interact with each other.

picture by kozumel

Now how to do that?

You first need the right mindset – why would it be such a good idea to connect travelers and locals? Maybe you don’t see a reason why locals would want to mingle with travellers? Sure, travellers are interested in meeting locals to get an insider view on the place they’re visiting, but why would locals would want to meet travelers? They know their way around the city, they have their own friends around, they’re not interested in making new acquaintants for a couple of days only… Well but maybe it’s not that devious at all: think couchsurfing for example! People offer strangers to crash on their couch, only to make new friends and exchange life stories. Meeting with travellers, locals can benefit from getting inspiration, new ideas from their stories, hearing their points of views on political topics etc.

That probably gives you an idea of the type of locals / travellers you want to target. Still, could the location – a hotel in your own city – be a problem?

Regarding this point, the surroundings we determined to place the hotel in (Downtown Manhattan) probably couldn’t be more fitting: Nowhere have I seen hotels with such high local attraction – some of the most popular clubs are based in hotels (The boom boom room and Le Bain in the Standard Hotel; The club ‘Jane Hotel’ in the actual hotel; the club ‘Hotel Chantelle’ which isn’t even a hotel, ‘Hudson Terrace’/'Good units’ in the Hudson Hotel, The dream hotel etc.pp), some hotels already use their common spaces as (co-)working spaces (like the Ace Hotel that we listed in the briefing as inspiration example) etc.

You need to think beyond creating simple clubbing spaces here though. What about a still informal, but less flirty environment? Where approaching somebody isn’t interpreted in one way only? A place where (quoting the briefing) “(…) people come together unpredictably, unexpectedly, serendipitously. It must demonstrate that it stands a chance of gathering people from all across the city’s demographics and psychographics.” This requires to think beyond the usual - there’s many ways to approach this task, the important thing is to think outside the box. You get a lot of creative freedom: which space you choose, whether you allow technology to play a big role in your concept, whether your concept solely focuses on the physical space… all up to you!

Sounds like a tough challenge?

It is! And that’s what makes it so exciting! Last but not least, the real test will come at the end, when the chosen design will be featured on Tablet’s website as a Tablet hotel, available for booking. So you want to see your concept eventually become a hotel in Downtown Manhattan? Then show us your ideas… the project launched last week and is open for submissions until May 30th – can’t wait to see yours!

Hey jovotans!

We have a great feedback video from Kurt Reinhard  from the Center for Storytelling of the the global skin project-

Let’s hear what he has to say!

As well as this video feedback we have another bonus thank you- Some awesome Vaude gear to sweeten the deal for you global skin participants!

Five lucky community members will receive a Vaude backpack or outdoor jack as an extra Karma prize valued at 100.00 & 130.00 EUR.

Who will get what? The Idea, Comment & Rating Karma Kings will receive the Vaude jacket & the overall Karma King and a special wild card chosen by the client will receive a Vaude backpack.

Pretty cool stuff to add to your global skins!

We just got the compiled feedback from all of the members of the German Stage Association on Theater Inter-Action! project. They made some good points! Read on and check out what they have to say!

First, they created some questions for you guys to think about:

• Who can implement technological gadgets such as augmented reality, etc.? Is that feasible for a small or medium-sized theater? What does it cost?
• In theory, it’s great that the audience can interact and decide on changes within the plot.  But can they practically realize the interactive elements of an established production or a well known theater piece?
• In order to attract users in social networks for the theater, you need interesting,especially entertaining content (videos, pictures and stories). What are the concrete ideas on how such content can be produced for a given game plan?
• How can ideas help, more specifically for theater associations, to connect the internet better and promote & show off their vast array of differences from each other?
• How can you organize a flashmob and create a specific outcome or a specific topic?
• How would a school group who normally doesn’t decide on their own, become theater goers for themselves?

Here are some critique points:

• Submissions should include an idea on how specifically things should be staged - ie positioning, play, costumes, scenery, etc.
• Almost all the ”guerrilla” ideas underestimate (“We play for 2 minutes in the S-Bahn/in a public place / in the bank / library”, etc.) the cost (mainly organizational effort within the theater) and overestimate the benefits of the idea- like how many people would really see & be effected by the performances. Please review your idea again & give us an estimation of both aspects. Also remember an equally creative advertising approach.
• Think about how the ideas can be integrated in any given theater everyday! (Who can and would see an idea and how? Where and when to implement, and how does it work?)
• Granted the  project is about a city-theater space. But, what about widening the reach by including a regional integrative aspect?
• Evaluate the value of the social media content. Which kinds content (ie what kind of stories) should be mentioned? What should be passed on & told?
• The idea of mobile theaters is great. They could be used by different theaters or bought from the Stage Association. The Stage Association could rent them out for festivals and for even more activities. However there should also be ideas for creating a production in an existing theater establishment.

And some stuff they really liked!

• The aspect of augmented reality is for sure the hottest and coolest aspect of smart phones. Exactly this aspect is what the theaters are aiming for. Staging concepts which build on augmented reality effects would guarantee a run to the theater by people who never saw a theater from the inside before!
• Especially those concepts which allow new forms of corporation between the theaters are highly appreciated!
• Street theater and guerilla activities are great forms of theater! Unfortunately both don’t leave a permanent mark and both are only visible for a small group of people. Those approaches are better the more they are visible afterwards and the bigger the audience is, i.e. the result is still visible afterwards or could be seen on youtube.

So there you have it- Oh yeah and we understand this is a lot of feedback, with a lot of opinions, of a lot of different people (the German Stage Association has quite a few members !) And your idea might not have do with each point but please do your best to take the aspects that approach your idea into consideration. So, with the last week ahead, let’s get to it!