Another award! PICNIC is proud to announce that '¡Viva la Creaçión!' has won a Webby! Hurray! In its 11th year, The Webby Awards are presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-member body of leading Web experts, business figures, luminaries, and creative celebrities.

During PICNIC'07, Media artist Eboman invited the audience to collaborate in video sampling contest, culminating in the ¡Viva la Creación! party on September 27 at PICNIC'07 in Amsterdam.

Congratulations to Eboman, as well as his partners in crime, XS4all and Creative Commons!

From 24 to 26 September 2008, the Amsterdam Cross Media Week Foundation will organise PICNIC’08. In addition to the PICNIC Conference, PICNIC will host the PICNIC SPECIALS and the PICNIC LABS, organised in collaboration with a select number of partners. Interested parties are requested to send in their proposals before April 15.

Please contact Anne Cramwinckel at anne@crossmediaweek.org if you wish to receive more information and the form you should use to send in your ideas..

The Creative Company Conference took place in Amsterdam yesterday, and brought together an interesting assortment of speakers and delegates. Main topic of the day: how can companies be creative?

Some quotes from four chief creative officers on fostering creativity, attention to detail and entrepreneurship and social responsability:

• “To be creative, you have to start from a place of connection”, according to Ivy Ross, who has worked for Disney, Mattel and Old Navy. She gets teams to ‘hum’ together. She had video profiles made of everyone in a new design department– to facilitate connections. She gets a consultant in to classify people based on their facial characteristics (which sounds as scary as it is), striving for the right team composition. “People are more creative in groups, and you need to find a way to get a group to connect. Smart leaders will be like orchestra conductors”.

• Stanley Hainsworth, who is the 'Global Creative' at Starbucks referred to the '100 list' he spotted in the back office of a local Starbucks. It turned out to be a list of 100 clients, their names, mnemonic aids (‘ pink bag’), and personal coffee orders - the barristas challenged each other to memorise all of their local customers’ preferences. When he came back months later, the list had turned into "the 200 list"....

Today many people gathered to say goodbye to Eckart Wintzen, PICNIC adviser, maverick entrepreneur and green venture capitalist. We are pleased that Wired Magazine pays hommage to Eckart Wintzen. Wintzen also played a role in the founding of Wired: In 1991, his company made a one-time investment of $35,000 in a single-issue magazine, never printed, produced by Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe. Rossetto and Metcalfe went on to found Wired in 1992.