The Ice Cream Man has (aka Matt Allen) has decided to dedicate his life to ice cream, living the ice cream dream – or as he puts it “Slingin’ the cream.  Livin’ the dream”.  Now that’s awesome

The genius thing about the Ice Cream Man is that he’s turned giving away ice cream into a business.  What’s even cooler is that he’s created an *ice cream powered ad network* – a totally genius idea, turning ice cream into a form of media – as with each ice cream he also gives away flyers / posters for nice and friendly brands.

A key to the success of his ice cream powered network, is Ice Cream Man’s partnership with Ben and Jerry’s – who donate all the ice cream for free, and without whose ice cream I daresay Ice Cream Man would merely be *Man* (ice creamless).

So hats off to Ben and Jerry for supporting such an awesome concept, and here’s hoping The Ice Cream Man can navigate his way across the Atlantic and do a tour of the UK for the summer months . . .

Check out the Rubber + VAN team meeting Ice Cream Man:

And Ally and Alex loving the Ice Cream Man a little too much:

Viral Ad Network

Tony’s main theorising is based around managing your energy levels better, and he pointed out initially that “time is limited but energy isn’t”, and therefore it’s up to a person to work out how to best use / manage their energy levels to get more done.

Apparently there’s 4 types of energy:

• Physical energy: this is the foundation of all energy, and is based around certain factors like fitness, nutrition, sleep and rest / renewal.

• Emotional energy: as how you feel influences how you perform

• Mental (focus): the best way to get things done efficiently, is to do one thing at a time for an absorbed time.  Distractions are bad.

• The Human Spirit (purpose):  when you have a clearly defined sense of purpose, especially when it’s based on a vision, is the human spirit enhanced.

The heart of the problem relating to energy management comes down to, according to Tony, how we perceive our mode of operation, with people assuming we operate in the same was as computers – i.e. that we can operate at high speeds contrinuously for long periods all the time.

But humans don’t operate in the same *continuous way* as computers, but instead are *rhythmic*, with our energy levels fluctuating during the day.  This natural rhythm is the Ultradian Ryhthm, which is a 90 minute wave our bodies cycle through.

So what this means is that the best way to get more work done is to align our natural bodily rhythms and create a rhythmic relationship between spending energy and renewing energy.

In practice this means working in *90 minute sprints*, aligned with our bodily rhythms and taking out time to *renew* (re-engergise) before starting over again.  And there’s no more important form of renewal than *sleep* – which Tony says we should really make the most of, pointing out that the best virtuosos violin players in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra take on average 8.6 hours of sleep a day, which over a week adds up to 14 hours extra sleep a week compared to the average person.

In answering questions at the end of the session, Tony’s top tips to more productive life (which he lives himself) were:

1. Work in 90 minute sprints
2. Do most of your intense / creative work in the mornings, as you have more energy then
3. Go to bed earlier

So there you go – according to Tony it’s not a case of “snooze you lose”, rather “snooze you win” . . .

*Bigger tellies*

Everyone knows the best homes have the biggest TVs ; – )

*Bigger storms*

You wouldn’t be a *real Englishman* if you didn’t enjoy a good bit of rain . . .

*More European restaurants than Europe*

Melbourne’s European-style restaurants are arguably better than those in London.  The *European* (which @dasharp took me to) makes a point of only serving European wine, without a drop of Australian on the wine list.  Nice.

*Better coffee*
Guide books about Melbourne endlessly go on about *its amazing coffee*.  Well, it’s true.  Melbourne does serve up awesome coffee, and nowhere does it better than Mario’s on Brunswick Street.

*More obscure shops*

Not only does Brunswick Street serve up the best coffee, it also serves up the most *obscure but loveable* shops – including the awesome *Meet me at Mikes* and *Polyester*.

*Better kebabs*

Every night out needs to end with a kebab, and I had possibly the *best kebab* I’ve ever had (and possibly the most expensive) at *King Jon’s* on King Street.

Well, I say “new office” – it’s really a temporary thing (sadly) as we sort ourselves out over here. The awesome thing about Perth is it’s openness, as it’s based around the Swan River which is a massive great thing surrounded by amazing houses (one of which I’m camping out in for this leg of my trip) with amazing views . . . all of which makes working that *little bit easier* – especially as you know you’ve got amazing beaches 2 mins away.

Today’s the *official start* to Delib’s tour of Australia, so I’ll be heading off to see various lovely people in the WA government, who I expect will have various degrees of sore heads and sunburn after yesterday’s Australia Day celebrations ; – )

@DelibThinks

Having initially seeded the story to local press, the project was picked up by the York Evening Press – who ran a story with the headline “HORN SUPREMACY”  – a genius nod to everyone’s favourite Matt Damon schlock-buster, which made me laugh – though my dad didn’t get the reference ; – )

If you’ve got an ideas for Ultimate Alarm concepts, add them here Ultimate Alarm ideas

See the VuVuTech 5000 concept video here:

+ amusing local newspaper headline below!

So, it’s nice to get a bit of outside recognition for your work – like a tap on the back to say “Heck, you’ve got some great stuff going on in your company”.

And the guys at Monocle Magazine did just that a couple of weeks back – as they popped by Delib’s Soho office for a quick chinwag and (mildly painful) photoshoot (it really is that difficult to look so happy and relaxed in a photo).

You can read the Monocle article below, or if you want to part with £5, get a copy down your local news agent.

[N.B. if you haven't read Monocle Magazine before it's an awesome mag - in fact my favorite - covering world affairs, business, culture and design.  Delib apparently fits into the realm of being an *interesting* business.  Which is nice to know!]

For some reason the photographer (Olivier ) was mildly obsessed with the random pieces of art we have dotted around the office (all Bristol graffiti art of course!) – and shot photos of me and Matt posing (naturally) in front of them . . .

Olivier shows us how to pose

Matt attempts a Zoolander-esque magnum

I was really taken by the thank you note and sticker, as they gave a sense of personality to a company selling pretty commoditised goods. Through this small gesture and at little cost, they’d become socially awesome.

And it isn’t just me who thinks this. As last night on the tube, I randomly saw a guy with an Awesome Merchandise sticker on his guitar case. So it looks like by dint of their little sticker and thank you note they’ve gone viral (a bit).

@Rubber_Republic

Check out the promo poster here:

The brief for Crisis Point was along the lines of “come up with a teaching aid to help citizenship teachers teach European Citizenship more easily and effectively”. So – as always – we wanted to give a bit of Delib’s patented *engagement zing* to the project and came up with the concept of the Crisis Point game – a kind of Hollywood Blockbuster disaster movie meets teacher resource ; – )

Pitched with the line “Europe has reached Crisis Point. A contagious pandemic is spreading fast. Can you make the right decisions to save lives?”, the idea of the game is for school children to play out the roles of a citizen, MEP and European Commissioner to experience how the EU works at first hand – albeit in the context of impending disaster.

Check out some photos of the school teacher packs here:

A big thanks to all the team involved in this, including Craig H, the nice people at Play Nicely and of course our lovely clients Daniel + Vera at the European Parliament.