MONDAY 6th – Squeaky Hill Quiz Show

#1 Squeaky Hill Features rounds such as the Practical Fag Break Round, the News Round Round, the Write A Film Synopsis Round, the Physical Challenge Round (A race to Tesco for a pork based product) and of course the obligatory Stone, Scissors Paper Sudden Death Tournament Challenge Round. Free entry from 8pm!

TUESDAY 7th – Lunchtime concert – danilo oliveira (trumpet) and maya soltan (piano)

#1 A bite size lunchtime concert at the Colston Hall with the Royal Academy of Music’s Danilo Oliveira (Trumpet) and Maya Soltan (Piano). From 1pm £5 a ticket.

WEDNESDAY 8th – Animation awards

#1 This is your chance to vote for your favourites in the British Animation Awards 2012! Three programmes containing a mix of animated shorts, music videos and commercials (including two from Bristol!) offer a chance to see the cream of the last two year’s animation films on the big screen. Starts 6pm. Watershed, 60 mins £7.20 adult ticket.

THURSDAY 9th – Digital Bristol

#1 DigitalBristol is a community for people in Bristol & the surrounding areas who want to stay up-to-date with the ever changing digital landscape. This month’s speaker is Giles Colborne, Managing Director at cxpartners. This talk will show you how asking the right questions can help plan and design better user experiences, how to measure the return on investment of delight and how to understand where to focus your design effort and product development. 9 – 6 pm at Horts Bristol.

FRIDAY 10th – Lunchtime Talk & Digital Training

#1 Lunchtime Talk: ‘Design fiction’ describes ways of using storytelling techniques, especially in the form of video, to make speculative design ideas feel real. The explores how technology designers employ design fictions as a form of prototyping but also highlights how these ideas frequently bleed into cinema and popular fiction. PM studio, 1pm free.

#2 Advanced Social Media and Digital Marketing Training
Learn how to create conversion funnels within a strategic digital plan, understand how to personalise and customise Google Analytics and how to write engaging content for customers that optimises website and social networking to stimulate conversations and prospects. From £195 at Bristol Business College.

SATURDAY 11th – Record Fair

#1 Record fair – 1000s of LPs, singles and CDs, from rare collectibles to re-releases, from funk to punk, you’ll find it here!

MONDAY 23rd – Cinebabies and Quiz

#1 Cinebabies- Coriolanus: Cinebabies is a weekly daytime screening which allows parents to bring their babies (as long as their under 12 months) safe in the knowledge that they won’t bother other cinema goers.  Coriolanus marks Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut with this Shakespeare adaptation.  Starts at 11am at the Watershed.

#2 Watershed Film Quiz- This quiz will include audio and visual rounds.  IMDb have also donated special prizes as well as donating some of their own team to partake in the quiz!  Starts at 8pm, £2.50 per person.

TUESDAY 24th – Animation and App training

#1 CineMe Animation Workshop- Joseph Wallace, a Bristol based film and theatre director will be presenting a 2 hour workshop introducing the art of stop-motion and puppet animation.  Takes place at the Green Room in the Tobacco Factory, starts at 8pm.  Tickets, £7.50.

#2 Mobile Apps Training Course- Tailored to designers and web developers, ‘pay what you think it’s worth’ for this workshop on designing apps for iPhones and Androids. Places are limited to 12 participants, 9-5.30pm at the Pervasive Media Studio.

WEDNESDAY 25th – Artist’s and Digital talks

#1 Free Artists Talk: Jen Southern and Laura Sillars will provide a live demonstration of the new audio visual installation, Polyrhythmia. Participants are invited to take a ‘Space Metronome’ on a journey and as they move, they hear the rhythm of the speed that they are travelling. Starts at 6pm at the Watershed.

#2 The Beauty of Digital: New technologies, old aesthetics and where the two meet, following on from Polyrhythmia, a panel of Digital creatives will share their experiences of where the old and the new meet in the digital modern age.  Promising to be a lively and thought-provoking celebration of the creative possibilities of new technologies.  Free event but must be booked in advance!  Starts at 7.30pm at the Watershed.

THURSDAY 26th – Albert, Eco filmmaking and Slapstick

#1 Think Future Now – TV, Film and Albert:  ThinkFutureNow is designed to produce a cultural change within creative companies in Bristol to help them become more sustainable, work smarter and reduce their environmental footprint.

This event is the perfect opportunity to learn about initiatives on sustainable TV and filmmaking and Albert (the BBC’s friendly carbon calculator). Guest speakers include Emma Peddie  (BBC Sustainability team), Melanie Dicks (Greenshoot), Marina Traversari & Duncan Haskell (Icon Films) and Matt Golding (Team Rubber). 6.30 – 8 pm with drinks afterwards, FREE at BBC Bristol.

#2 Bristol’s Slapstick Festival: returning for it’s 8th year and it’s bigger and better than ever. This year’s special guests include writer, performer and television personality Griff Rhys Jones, Monty Python’s Terry Jones and Ian Lavender (Private Pike) from Dad’s Army. January 26th – 29th with various venues and prices.

FRIDAY 27th – Winter Cider festival and Bristol place making

#1 Bristol Winter Cider Festival: A sell out last year! On offer will be over 100 ciders and perries as well as hog roast rolls and cheese platters. Somerset’s premier Wurzels tribute band The Mangledwurzels will be playing a full show at all three sessions to help you drink up thy cider. Brunel’s Passenger Shed £7.00 in advance.

#2 Pervasive Media Studio Lunchtime Talk – Bristol’s placemaker: Serial entrepreneur Mike Bennett has spent his professional life starting and running businesses such as e3, Goldbrick House & Bristol Media. Last year he became Bristol’s Place Making Director. His biggest project to date was See No Evil and he’s currently plotting a whole host of new ideas for 2012. In his talk he will be unpicking what it means to be a place maker and how the studio and wider community can get involved in shaping the city. 1 – 2pm FREE

SUNDAY 29th – Funny Stuff

#1 TumbleWeed Comedy Club is a brand spanking new comedy club at the Big Chill that aims to promote fresh and exciting new talent from this city and beyond. Go along, grab a sofa and warm yourself by the fire….or give the microphone a go.

#2 Omid Djalili: The multi-award winning stand-up, international film star, and acclaimed writer/producer goes back on the road for the first time in 3 ½ years with his brand new show. Colston Hall 8pm, £19 a ticket.

TUESDAY – Sister Act and Spoken Word

#1 Sister Act If anyone remembers Sinbad from Brookside, this won’t disappoint! Failing that, it looks like it could be good fun. Tickets available for a number of dates, starting at £18.50.

#2 Henry Rollins: The Long March US punk-rock icon Henry Rollins takes to the spoken word providing us with political commentary, personal anecdote and ‘some of the most provocative chit-chat around’. Tickets £19.50, Doors 7pm.

WEDNESDAY – Short Films

#1 Cineme 9, Short Film Extravaganza Cineme 9 will be screening over 25 short films at the Hen & Chicken. Seems extremely good value for money with tickets being priced at £5, they can be purchased in advance or on the night. Starts at 8pm.

THURSDAY – Being Green and Girl Geeks

#1 – Energy Policy in 2012 hosted by Bristol City Council at the Council House. Organised by Forum for the Future of Bristol Green Capital and West of England Carbon Challenge members, a panel of experts will be answering key questions about what’s going to happen to our planet in 2012. 4-6pm.

#2- Girl Geek Event #12. Infineon technologies are both sponsoring this event and providing pizza! Pizza aside, Dr Constance Fleuriot, a Research Associate at the Digital Cultures Research Centre will be speaking. Any female PhD students are also invited to talk about their work. This event is free as always and takes place in Stoke Gifford (close to Bristol Parkway). Starts at 6.30pm.

FRIDAY – Lunchtime Talk and Social Media.

#1 – Precious Cargo an application for Mesh Mobs. Another lunchtime talk by Pervasive Media Studios, this time the talk is on 3G and smart phones and the influence these forms of media can have on crowds. Basically a very clever theory about mesh forming. Starts at 1pm.

#2- CIPR Breakfast Briefing and Social Media ‘Getting Social Strategically’Register early for this session covering the importance of a social media strategy, the basics of developing one and how this fits with the traditional marketing mix. Starts early at 7.45 am at Horizon House, £5 for members and £10 for non-members.

SATURDAY – Script Writing and Picnics

#1- Script Boot Camp- Do something productive with your weekend like write a script….or learn how to write one anyway. Lessons in the art of structure, character and dialogue will have you fighting fit to enter into the Scriptwriting world! Quite pricey at £95 so I guess you have to be pretty serious about script writing, taking place at the Watershed. Starts at 10am.

#2- Free Indoor Picnic at Trinity Centre- monster making, origami, book swapping- just some of the fun events at Trinity this weekend… whilst picnicking. Remember to bring a picnic and blanket. Starts at 12pm.

Our Team Rubber blog has been ranked #1 out of 152 of the Bristol Media companies included!  Now we need to note that this is only part one of the report and is the quantity based section (we had 109 posts), but it’s still good to win when you didn’t know you were competing!

This started a little inter-agency rivalry with Gez (from Delib) noticing that they had posted 140 times in 2010, so could actually have beaten Team Rubber. Over at the Viral Ad Network we managed a lowly 101 posts, and Rubber Republic is yet to comment

Personally I find that regular blogging is a tough task to maintain – client work always seems to get in the way! But I do think its worth trying to be disciplined. At VAN we find that blogging, alongside other social outreach, is a great way of generating new business and attracting relevant people to our site.

I’ll leave it at that before I type myself into a New Years Resolution!

It’s always good to see our friends in Bristol involved in national projects and producing engaging, collaborative online content.

If anyone’s at a loose end this weekend I’d definitely recommend going to see it – it’s on at the VUE cinema at Longwell Green.

On a crisp winter morning walking to work, some times you see the funniest of things. I would walk a mile in these shoes, but they seemed to be going on their own path. A little side project of mine is to photograph interesting things on my way to Bristol centre, over the years I have an interesting collection. I invite you to have a go too, thinking of a small expo in the loo and a prize for the winner!

I’d never been to an “unconference” before, and found the format quite unusual, essentially a fifteen minute talk, followed by small group discussions at your tables before asking the speaker questions.

“The Fragmentation of Knowledge in the Brain” – Derek Smith

The other unusual feature of the conference was that until we turned up we had no idea what most of the talks were going to be about.

The talks were great, ranging from the BBC News website, to the Open Shakespeare project. The two I probably found the most interesting though were the talk by Derek Smith of the University of Wales Institute Cardiff on the way in which the brain stores semantic knowledge and relates that to syntax, and the “on-the-day” Steve Loughran of HP Labs who’s working on Hadoop (readers may remember the high resolution buhddabrot that I posted a few months ago, which I rendered on a hadoop cluster). It was great to be able to ask some questions about Hadoop, especially since I had to miss the Hadoop conference in London a few weeks ago.

Steve Loughran Shows how he’s using Hadoop over anonamous bluetooth logs to show the council how many people regularly use local footpaths.

Though it won’t convince me to splash out on an Alexander McQueen dress or Christian Louboutin shoes as modelled by Lady Tottington, having the well-loved Bristolian duo Wallace & Gromit front the campaign for the upmarket chain is definitely going to prove popular with consumers and their children.