Richard “Tricky” Bassett of Tricky Business looks ahead to FOTB 2010

Looking ahead to ‘FOTB’, Chapter V

The blogosphere is buzzing about John Davey’s annual festival of design and interactivity that is ‘Flash on the Beach’. I’m fairly confident that I’ve been every year, I’ve got a number of bags, t-shirts and even some flip flops, so I guess I’m a bit of a ‘vet’.

This year I’m mostly looking forward to attending the event with no client meetings to rush back to on the Tuesday; this has been the case for the last two years so I’m really excited about enjoying a relaxed event – the unique feature of FOTB is the culture and the quality of the community that embodies it.

Here’s my list of ‘must-see’ sessions:

- Keynote, (0900 Monday), you gotta be there when it all kicks-off and sample the vibe. IMHO Adobe needs to deliver some exciting new toys this year.

- Hoss Gifford, (1445 Monday), Hoss is a fantastic entertainer and never fails to deliver, this set should get everybody going after lunch, the description mentions Rob Chiu who presented an awesome short film last year: ‘Fear/Love’, so this could be an awesome session to get your creative juices going – if he sticks to the script!

- Robert Hodgin, (1600 Monday), I saw Robert speak a couple of years ago, his work is beautiful and he is an excellent presenter.

- Inspired Session: Stefan Sagmeister, (20:00 Monday), ‘The Inspired Session’ format seems pretty unique to FOTB and it works really well, Stefan is a design legend so it will be great to kick back with a beer in the evening and listen to his words of wisdom.

- ‘The Elevator Pitch’, (Tuesday 0900), 20 speakers, 3 minutes each, say no more.

- Seb Lee Delisle, (Tuesday 1330), I spoke to Seb at dConstruct and it sounds like he’s put a hell of a lot of work into his research lately, he’s an awesome presenter so this session should be great.

- Brendan Dawes, (2000, Tuesday), Brendan recently tweeted that he isn’t going to be doing many speaking gigs after spring next year, personally I think this would be a real shame so I’ll take every remaining opportunity to listen and learn!

- Hugh Elliot, (1130 Wednesday), you don’t often see sessions about communication and interpersonal skills at this kind of event so I’m intrigued to see how this will go down.

- Joshua Hirsch, (1445 Wednesday), I think most agencies have experimented with injecting R&D time into the production schedule, it will be fascinating to hear how Big Spaceship have tackled this issue.

Whatever happens, you know that John and his team will bring some awesome speakers to the stage and put on a fantastic show! See you there.