Every fortnight BCM has a bake off where three staff members are rostered to bring in sweet treats for the rest of the office. My first venture into bake off land was yesterday where I was teamed up with naked chefs Jeff and Martin. And I let them down. Badly. But is the occasional fail such a bad thing?

If you haven’t seen me on Twitter lately there’s good reason you may have assumed I loved Vietnam a little too much and stayed to live a life working in the rice fields. While that is a fair assumption, I am indeed alive and well. However, this blog is not.

I’ve come back to a new job as an Interactive Strategist at independent agency BCM. After one and a half weeks here, I am happy to say that it is a great environment, I am surrounded by some bloody smart people and a there is a really strong passion for creative yet responsible work. So for the next few months I am headfirst into this new role. Combine this with a bunch of personal goals and a greater focus on work/life differentiation… it doesn’t leave much room for Mr.Wanker.

It wasn’t meant to end this way. I was going to finish the year off with a really meaningful post on the next big thing for 2010 or what I learnt in 2009 or some sort of top 10 list which would be easy Twitter fodder. But I’m not going to. I’m done. Spent. Signed off. 2009 is almost over and I’m happy not to poke the beast anymore.

Today marks my last day at DP Dialogue. This brings me to the end of my three and a half year stay in the De Pasquale family. For the past eight months, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Gino De Pasquale and Matt Granfield in an agency that is well ahead of its time (as well as being profitable). It’s been exciting, experimental and educational. I’ll be reaping the rewards of surrounding myself with such forward and broad thinkers for a long time to come.

You may have noticed that Another Advertising Wanker has lost its poo brown template and moved on to a much cleaner, easier to read magazine style. But hey, I’m not all about artificial here. How could I with thisboxhead? I have (or will) included some new features which should trap you within my web of self-indulgent opinions a little longer. These include…

Sam constantly adjust my perspective and inspires me to look beyond the day to day. While I don’t have the free spirit he does, he shows me how much there is to do and to explore out there. Check out his blog to read about his experiences (clubbing in Kenya, surfing in California, elephant orphanages in Sri Lanka) and view his amazing photos. Truly inspiring!

The following are my notes from last week’s Marketing Now conference in Melbourne. In no way is it a comprehensive overview of the event or the content but the tidbits that I managed to write down, email myself or tweet.The amount of info for each speaker does not reflect how much I got out of their talk. It is purely what I wrote down at the time. Hopefully there’s one or two pieces of gold you can take out of it…

For anyone who is interested, I have just been profiled by Denise Shrivell on Digital Ministry. It can be found here. Denise sent me through eleven questions to answer and they were not easy. While I don’t usually shy away from giving my opinion, committing to answers on the current state and future of digital media was daunting.

Sorry, it’s been a while. I’d like to say that I haven’t posted for a while because I have been out bringing democracy to Iran, locked up on a remote Australian island with swine flu or trying to legitimately organise a ute to help Mr.Rudd with his gardening. But they would be horrible lies. The boring truth is that I have dedicated the last week (and most likely the next) to transferring this blog from here to a new URL through WordPress. Needless to say, I am about as gifted …

Ego is a funny thing. There were two things that happened this week which almost sent mine hurtling into the stratosphere:
1. Being ranked 44th in B&T’s Top 50 Marketing Blogs
2. Cracking the top 50 in Julian Cole‘s Top 164 Australian Marketing Pioneer Blogs with #46
However, it only took one narcissistic search of my name to bring my ego crash landing on the second page of Google (just before my Twitter account)….

In all seriousness, whether or not you are precious about these rankings, it’s always nice to get a little nod …

It’s been a little crazy around these traps lately. And that’s a good thing. But before I push on to new content I want to stop and acknowledge a few people who have helped bring important issues forward or who have supported me in their postings. Here goes:
The Starlight Foundation’s Livewire Project
On the weekend, Rachel Browne from the Sydney Morning Herald wrote about the Starlight Foundation’s Livewire project under the headline of ‘Charity project under fire‘. This is the first mainstream article questioning the project.
Matt Granfield and I …