To share some of our experiences, here’s a few tidbits from the various places and people we’ve stumbled across:

SXSW (Austin)

The key to SXSW’s awesomeness is its mix of awesome speakers, awesome attendees and beer, giving it a university-type of feel – with a healthy mix of learning and LOLZ.  The most inspirational talks I went to this year included hearing Elon Musk openly talking about his work, from founding and selling PayPal, through to dedicating his life to electric cars (through his Tesla Car company) and space exploration (through his Space X company).  Given his track record, it was easy to impressed by him, however his dedication to huge ideas matched by his intelligence (during the talk he gave a comprehensive explanation of battery technology) was truly inspiring.  Possibly the most interesting question he gave an answer to was a question about his biggest mistake – which he said was *hiring people based soley on talent and not character*, which I thought was a fascinating response (and one to which I’m wholly signed up to).

New York

New York was the true start to VAN’s US adventures.  Given the size of the city and its reputation as a hard-working / hard-nosed city it felt like a bit of a baptism of fire – however, from the very first meeting we had Liz and I were very much welcomed with open arms by all agencies we met.  Testament to the good will for us was the turnout at our New York #KittenCamp event - which was a complete sell out (180+) and a huge success.  Special thanks goes to Mark Fallows @ McCann for his heroics in a cat suit, along with Faris and Rosie for their heroics in horse and dog suits

Chicago

Along with the title of the Windy City, Chicago’s best known for its amazing architecture, extraordinary deep pan pizzas, home of ad agency DraftFCB (whose founder Howard Draft has a whole Chicago street named after him) and the home of the Chicago Bulls basketball team.  What we also discovered was that Chicago is perishingly cold in March, which made experiencing all of the above a little bit more of a challenge.  I’m pleased to say that we did manage to experience all that Chicago offers, highlights including watching the Chicago Bulls end Miami Heat’s 22 game unbeaten run and see modern day basketball legend Le Bron James in near tears.  From a work perspective the number of meetings was less intense, however we did meet some great people doing awesome viral stuff (including this corker from Draft) and we finally had some time to dedicate to organising our San Francisco #KittenCamp extravaganza.

San Francisco

Having spent the previous week in sub zero temperatures in Chicago, the sun and pleasant spring clime of San Francisco was a relief;  and so was the laid-back and assured self-confidence that life on the West Coast brings.  San Francisco again saw an intense number of agency meetings for both me and Liz, with Catherine starting to get a better understanding of the Silicon Valley investment space.  An interesting trend we noticed across San Francisco was a love of awesome offices and dogs – and in Zynga’s case, a good mix of both (I particularly loved their *barking lot* concept!)  Another standout office was Monkey Inferno’s, which included their own in-office chef, and boutique-hotel styled over-night bedroom.

Running #KittenCamps in new cities is always a daunting prospect, however San Francisco seemed to come together easier than most – to the point that in the end we were turning people away for the fear of being over-booked!  The only challenge we had was in finding a LOL Puppy to battle against, however in the end all came good with Ken Pontac (of Happy Tree Friends fame – Andy’s favourite web series and inspiration for Team Rubber’s DudeCorp) stepping in at the last minute to save the day (and lose the meme battle).

Aside from the obvious fun that comes from experiencing new cities, the last month has been pretty exhausting, so I’m pleased to be off to South America travelling.   I’ll be back in New York for mid May to continue VAN’s US work – living in-between there and San Francisco ’til the end of July when I’ll be back in London.  A huge thanks to everyone from Team Rubber who helped organise the adventure so far, especially Matt for the late nights organising meetings and Liz for enduring 4 weeks of travel with me.  And as a final note, I can’t imagine traveling for a month without the help of AirBnB hosts to provide awesome accommodation.  My favourite of the trip was our San Francisco SoMa loft apartment . . .

Over the last month I’ve had 40+ meetings with a whole host of interesting companies across the US, but Monkey Inferno stands out as a company that chimes most closely with what Team Rubber is about – and felt like a Team Rubber twin 1000′s of miles and several time zones away from our Bristol HQ.

And by twin I don’t mean the Danny Devito / Arnold Schwarznegger kinda twin, but more like Jedward i.e. equally awesome and dedicated to creative excellence (LOL).  Here are some of the similarities I pulled out of my time hanging with the Monkey guys:

Investment in ideas

Monkey Inferno are dedicated to ideas.  They call themselves an idea incubator and are set up to invest in good ideas, and learn from failed ideas.  They run 3 ventures at the same time (similar to Rubber’s 3: Delib, Rubber Republic and VAN).   Past ideas that they’ve trialled include Jolitics - a Delib type venture designed to change how people interact with democracy; and new ventures include Beer Hunt – a beer discovery and tracking app.

Small smart teams with centralised support

The way Monkey Inferno runs also has similarities to Rubber.  For each of their ideas, they put together a small team – usually a pair of developers, dedicated to building a v.1 of the app.  Each individual team is then supported by a central team which provide project management, front end development, design and admin – as well as an awesome office environment (and team chef).  Rubber runs in a similar way – with the Team Rubber group providing centralised admin, finance, office and management support to each of the Rubber companies – with levels of support depending on the needs of the company.  We sadly don’t provide a team chef ;-(

Random but fun company names and ethos

When I asked Shaan where the Monkey Inferno name came from he pretty much shrugged and said *it just sounded fun*.  But the name / brand of a company is super important to its ethos – i.e. characterful sounding companies will attract characterful people – and .  And as Elon Musk pointed out at SXSW this year, character is hugely important in a successful team.

Lunch Club vs in-house chef

Possibly the biggest difference between Rubber and Monkey lies in the way our lunch is prepared.  Whereas the guys at Monkey Inferno have their own in-office chef, Team Rubber (or at least our London office) run *lunch club* – where members of the team prepare lunch for the rest of the team on a daily basis.

It’s always nice to meet kindred spirit, and if there’s one thing our fortunate meeting reiterated is the importance of *generosity* in life (and work).  The whole encounter started with us inviting the Monkey team for free beers and lolz at #Kittencamp SF, and led to Monkey giving back with an invite to their Beer tasting evening – good rubber karma begetting good monkey karma . . .

I need someone to talk to our government and public sector customers a lot, helping them get the most from our digital democracy apps, and helping them engage and consult citizens well.

The most important goal for Delib is to have happy customers who keep using our apps (which are typically used on an annual subscription basis); great account management is vital for this. It’s about retention retention retention, and if we get it right it’s an all round win: our customers are happy, we’re happy, and together we’re helping citizens connect better with decision making.

We work in Bristol and London (UK), and Canberra (Australia); this job is based in Bristol, working with customers around the world. The job doesn’t suck; well maybe it does occasionally (mostly because our customers are in different timezones which can sometimes mean early starts or working late, but not usually because we screwed up), but generally it’s pretty good.

The people here are smart, demanding and have each other’s backs. The products are awesome, and we do something worthwhile. We work with government at the highest levels, and we work with local neighbourhoods and niche communities that are just as important.

We share studio space with Viral Ad Network and Rubber Republic (I’m a co-founder of both), which makes the place varied and interesting, but this job is very firmly with Delib. The challenge is to build a world-wide community of customers who are delighted with our democracy apps, and I need someone who will thrive on that (and not just for the short-term; we make long-term hires and aim to keep people learning and rewarded).

The account management role is well defined. It’s a vital connection between the work of our sales team and the work of our production team who build, maintain and support our apps. It also involves working with our studio services and financials team.

The work, in bullet points
Daily

• Be responsible for a specific set of our customers; and also assist other account managers (currently a team of two) as needed, to cover absence, holidays etc.
• Work with sales team to pitch and win opportunities, then take those customers through our on-boarding process (meh, buzzwords), and then maintain the account relationship and ensure we retain the customer.
• Communicate with customers by phone, email, and face to face as needed; (this is not a job for anyone who’s afraid of the phone or meeting people).
• Deliver training to new customers – which can sometimes mean a bit of hot-footing it around the country – but more importantly, establishing enthusiasm for our products.
• Identify and grow opportunities within existing accounts where additional products/services can be useful to the customer (you’ll need to be comfortable selling to people you have relationships with, but this role will never involve cold-selling, that’s a promise).
• Manage feedback on product improvement and proactively identify possible new features.
• Help resolve support and account admin issues.
• Work with the production team to get customers’ needs met, or their expectations managed.
• Help keep the studio running smoothly by keeping paperwork and admin moving, and being involved in planning etc.
• Seek references, recommendations & case study opportunities from customers.
• Share news and thinking with our customers and the wider digital democracy / gov community (mostly via Twitter, sometimes blog posts).

Requirements / experience

• A will to win. Winning is best.
• Strong writing skills; this job involves a lot of writing and it needs to be done well.
• Happy talking to people on the phone, and in meetings / presenting.
• Initiative: the cliche is ‘self-starting’. You’ll drown in our environment if you can’t just turn up and work well without prompting or constant prodding. We work flexible hours, and we don’t have time to arse around chasing people who are AWOL or shirking.
• To have an understanding of business, professional and account management fundamentals. This role is not suitable for people starting their career – genuinely sorry about that, we do hire a lot of fresh graduates at Team Rubber, but not this time.
• To thrive on building and maintaining relationships with our customers, and also to be able to maintain strong productive relationships with the rest of the team. The role is demanding in this respect as you have to move frequently between different sets of problems, reconcile multiple points of view, and sometimes you’ll have to tell people things that they don’t want to hear; you have to do that well and come out with a win.
• You’ll need to be able to soak up technical knowledge; you’ll need this to deal with admin tasks that have technical aspects (such as getting domain names set up correctly). You’ll also need it to communicate fluidly with our customers; to do this it’s essential to build an understanding of software engineering fundamentals (not how to program, but the production and operation of software – we can teach this if you have the interest and smarts for it). To help our clients directly, you’ll also need to learn some html and things like embedding rich media.
• Knowledge about public policy isn’t essential, but you’ll need to cultivate an interest in this. You need to be able to understand the different levels of government and public bodies around the world, and their different functions and needs. You’ll also need to engage with things like data protection.
• The job involves collaborating to write tenders and pitches. These can be a grind; I won’t pretend otherwise. The solution to this is to get them done well, and take pleasure in winning them.
• The job is in Bristol, UK. Don’t live here? Relocate, Bristol is awesome.

We also do all the standard tech-company stuff: Mac laptop, second screen, good chair, nice office, nine kinds of tea, company events, and training as you need it. We hate to waste money, but we invest heavily in the things we value: good tools, supporting people and rewarding success.

Who are you? I don’t know. I’ve got no pre-conceptions, only the requirements above. It’s an extremely demanding job, but done well, it’s also enormously fun, challenging and rewarding. Money isn’t mentioned here, but I’ve got some figures in mind; they’re not excessive but you can live on it. Grow with us.

Interested?
Send a covering letter to Annabel, and yes, a CV, tiresome as they are. We don’t place too much faith in CVs but the bad ones help us choose who gets routed to the no pile (we don’t enjoy saying no by the way). The covering letter is really what we look at. If we like the look of yours we’ll get you in for a standard hiring interview. Fancy that? Drop us a line.

So, here’s a quick tour of our (relatively) new London office which is deep in the heart of Soho’s Berwick Street market:

Our kitchen table (and LunchClub HQ)

Somewhere to relax and kick-back

The team hard(ish) at work

Office motto

And the view of Berwick Street market (during Friday lunchtime prayers at the mini-mosque next door)

The London office is open for anyone to come along and work.  There’s generally a couple of desks free + always the kitchen table and sofa available – so we look forward to seeing you!

Delib's Australian shared desk space

1) Alcohol on the shopping list (including cider) -  check

2) Enthusiastic employees – check

James and Rowena smile for the camera

3) The owl – Lorna is this you in bird form?!

The Owl system

The Owl system ensures the office washing up is done on a daily basis. If the Owl is on your desk then it is that persons’ turn to clear up. Alternatively you could use other means such as a sharable animation to encourage employees to tidy up

4) Pins on the map – check

Reading Rom office pins on the map

5) Koalas on the wall – hmm not yet

Koalas or are they drop bears?! on the wall our Delib AU offices

If your interested in meeting up with Dan or James then the team are based on James Street in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane.

SO Melbourne is probably the most akin city to Bristol which we have found in OZ. Yes Team Rubber that means it is an awesome city . Monday morning started of with Ben and I trialing the ideal dream of working for a digital company – the flexibility to work anywhere… including in the sun . Note Ben is still always phone & as chatty as ever.

Ben calls to check in on meeting times

Ben and James continued apace with their consultation dream team mission in Melbourne, this involved ensuring their importance was clearly known around the local parks. Two words….don’t mess:

Ben and James flex their muscles in Melbourne

On Wednesday morning (uber early) Dan and I traveled north of Sydney for the day to meet one of our Citizen Space clients Wyong Shire Council. At lunch, we decided to check out the local eatery with our client, but Dan made a bad call on ordering possibly Australias’ smallest pizza:

Dan puts on a smile despite having the tables' most disappointing lunch choice

Following 36 hours in and around Sydney, it was time to head to Canberra where the one and only Ben Fowkes presented to a Gov2.0 audience.

Craig introduces Ben's presentation

A successful presentation, a few new business meetings and a couple of training sessions later and the four of us were treated to Steak at one of Craigs’ local eateries:

Delib celebrate Ben's successful presentation with a steak

Yes I did chuckle profusely when I read the sign out loud

Of course we haven’t always got it right, but in the last 18 months more than ever across all Team Rubber companies we’ve put a real focus on making sure we’re in a position to grow valuable companies with long term visions.

And the latest company to evolve is VAN.  VAN started out life as Viral Ad Network, an ad network dedicated to distributing viral videos, and has grown into a suite of apps dedicated to helping brands and agencies with every part of the viral video-making process.

As we put it *VAN is a suite of apps for makers and marketers*.  The main driver behind the evolution of VAN from the Viral Ad Network came out of two things – a matching of market opportunity with team capacity / skills.  Looking at the evolving digital marketing space it has become clear that *content is king* and an ever-important part of the marketing mix.  Alongside the importance of content is also the rise of the use of apps / technology in facilitating various parts of the marketing process – the most obvious being SMM (Social Media Management) apps like Buddy Media and Wildfire.

So using Rubber Republic’s heritage in making awesome content and Viral Ad Network’s content distribution experience, VAN is designed to bring technology and content to help agencies and brands around the world make better content and get the most value out of their content.

On launch, VAN is made up of 3 core apps: TubeRank (helping make viral videos), Viral Ad Network (helping distribute viral videos) and #KittenCamp (for IRL LOLZ and learning).

To make the most out of each of the apps users need to sign up to a VAN account.  A main focus for the next 6 months is developing the VAN account system, which will become a hub for people in the content making and marketing communities to manage, make, market and monetise their content campaigns through.

To better explore what VAN’s about, check out VAN’s website, read Forbes’ profile of VAN or check out the promo videos for each VAN app below:

TubeRank - helping people make viral videos

Click here to view the embedded video.

#KittenCamp – IRL LOLZ and learning

Click here to view the embedded video.

Viral Ad Network – video distribution

Click here to view the embedded video.

Stop off numbero uno – Singapore

After *just* about managing to take off in the snow we spent a grueling 13 hours getting to Singapore. Only to be greeted by the one and only Angry Birds

Ben posing with angry birds "Row take a photo, take a photo "

Stop off numero dos – Brisbane

Home of Delib AU – well Dan and James that is (Craig lives in Canberra which is A.C.T territory… yes Ben A.C.T – Australian Capital Territory) & our shiney desk space in Reading Room Brisbane. After another 8 hour flight we were finally re-united with the Delib AU team:

The Delib AU team reunited for our first lunch together

Stop numero tres – Adelaide for the day

Yes that’s right we flew 2.5 hours each way for a client meeting…! Portugal and back anyone?!

Dan catches up after a meeting with City of Tee Tree Gully

Stop numero cuatro – Perth

5 hours from Brisbane and another mildly delayed flight later we land in Perth. At the weekend I went cycling in 36 degree heat whilst Ben decided to adventure round Freemantle prison. You can imagine who was a little more burnt of the two! After some useful meetings, Dan and I head up to King’s Park whilst waiting for Dan and Ben to wrap up a last minute appointment:

Rowena & Dan head up to King's park post client meeting

Stop numero cinco – Adelaide

Once Dan had retrieved his bag that was yes it got stuck on the conveyer belt! Ask Ben about how much he loves his really handy (but slightly broken) small suitcase – he really loves the useful handle on it…!

"Nope that is the last bag & yes it is stuck"

Stop numero seis – Melbourne

After a slightly bumpy landing coming in, we’re now in Melbourne for a few days. Today we’re catching up and prepping for more adventures next week. My inner transport geek is mildly excited about hopping on a tram over the weekend

Ben watching out for trams..

Watch this space for more adventures from Delib AU down under.

The role will mainly involve *campaign manager* type responsibilities; helping things run smoothly for our clients, from proposal to final reports. You will be doing useful work on live campaigns, and learning lots of things to set you up in a job in advertising or media.

So what does VAN do?

• - We are an ad network who focus in seeding viral (video) ads. We have a range of entertaining publishers with great sites who host our content and get it seen.
• - We work with some of the best ad agencies in the world, generating views and sharing for their brand campaigns, especially their YouTube videos. We’re UK based with offices in Bristol and London.
• - We’re growing fast, and we offer an outstanding opportunity for graduates or people who are starting their career in marketing, advertising and digital media. It’s a great learning environment.

What’s the job?
This is an awesome way to get started in the industry. You get to work with great clients and great content, and you’ll pick up key skills in account management, pitching, planning, media buying and reporting.

The role is mainly based around supporting two of our existing campaign managers (Dave & Becci) and will have four main responsibilities:

1. Sales – You will not have to do any selling yourself, but will be required to support our sales team and our pitching processes.
2. Delivery – Assisting campaign delivery and making media bookings with our network of publishers.
3. Client reporting – during and after a campaign has run its course.
4. Marketing – writing up case studies and helping with our Viral Video Charts.

__________________________________________________________________

What you’re like
This is a job for people who:

• - Are comfortable with numbers, especially straightforward arithmetic.
• - Enjoy talking to people by phone and email to develop relationships.
• - Work hard (cliche, but true here). It’s a job where you need to get your tasks done to time. It can also be necessary to check campaign progress out of office hours (using online systems).
• - Have solid writing skills: we don’t have time to check your spelling etc, and we’re working with clients who will judge us negatively if you can’t write clearly and accurately.

The type of work is fairly consistent and suits someone who is happy to do similar tasks on a daily basis. That said, the job is exciting: new opportunities come up, new proposals need to be done, we get sales wins and awesome content to seed, and campaigns need to get their views.

You will definitely need:

• - A good degree or relevant experience. Everybody here has proven themselves – either in an academic or work environment.
• - A genuine desire to get stuck into work and take responsibility.
• - Previous work experience, this can be anything dealing with people or a task based role. It doesn’t have to be relevant to marketing or online, but we don’t have time to teach you the most basic professional and get-things-done skills.

It’d also be great if you had:

• - Relevant experience. Either through study or hobby, experience in internetz would be useful!
• - Been to #kittencamp. We run monthly events – they’re awesome and we might have met you
• - A passion for web video – we love watching, sharing and lol’ing over online videos

Interested? Apply by emailing Ally with a covering letter outlining why you think you are suitable for the position and where your strengths lie, along with a 2 page CV.

Watershed has now announced the winning proposal, Hello Lamp Post. Congratulations go to PAN, Gyorgyi Galik and Tom Armitage, the creative team behind the idea. This is an interactive project that embodies the ‘playable’ ethos. Apparently, every postbox, bench, bollard and storm drain in Bristol has a code on it (who knew?). When Hello Lamp Post is up and running in summer 2013, people will be able to text the code to a certain number to engage those objects in conversation, such as:

Our work is all about cool stuff like this – using technology to connect people with things, governments and each other. We can’t wait to see how Hello Lamp Post will connect people to Bristol in such an imaginative and intimate way. Everyone with a mobile phone will be able experience the project, and find previously lifeless and ignored objects endowed with personalities and feelings.

Roll on, summer!