I will start with the biggest moment of the day and that was a presentation by Kevin Slavin, Managing Director and co-founder of area/code. He gave a presentation on digital gaming, but a different kind of digital gaming. His agency created SharkRunners.com, an interactive game for The Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.

Whats different about this game is its harmonization of the real world with the digital world. Instead of bringing gaming to the computer it brings the computer to the game. What this means is that the game, rather the experience, is grounded in real life experiences and occurrences.

SharkRunners.com is played in real-time and is based on gathering information about sharks to then be rewarded with fictitious money that translates to funding for more shark research. The goal is to have your ship intersect a shark’s path so a dive team can be deployed to research it. The catch is… the shark you are intersecting is a real shark in the open seas that has a gps location device embedded in it. That is the first bit of reality. The second it that being as it is played in real-time it takes hours for your ship to travel. Players do not sit in front of their computers, so if and when their ship intersects a shark’s path, they are text messaged and given three hours to respond and send a dive crew to research it (that part is fictional).

What this game represents is the beautiful mix of digital environment and reality - a concept which I feel my thoughts and ideas frequently if not always revolve around. I contest that nobody else has achieved this harmonization on this scale and challenge us all to set that as a goal with our digital brand thinking and advertising.

We should always bring our attention to grounding a digital campaign in real life - that makes it more holistic and all-encompassing. Because, when consumers are not engaging with the digital world they are inevitable in the real-world and making a ‘cross reality’ experience really is a more viable experience.

I have just checked into my room at the Hilton on Avenue of the Americas a few blocks south of Central Park. Across the street is Radio City Music Hall and the Time Life Building where the conference is.

Tomorrow I will have some exciting updates about the things that are going on. But before then check out my extensive two picture account of my travel:

You would think. But my lack of posting is because I have been buried IN the office trying to finish up all different sorts of projects.

Tomorrow at the too early hour of four am I am traveling to NYC for the Ad Age Digital Marketing Conference. There I will be live blogging on everything that goes on. I will have a ton of pictures and discussions on all of the panel discussions i attend, presentations and events going on.

This next week will be the busiest this blog has ever seen. I have mixed things up a bit with a simpler look and NO ads. something I keep going back and forth on even though it hardly affords me a cup of coffee.

YOU KNOW THE GUY who waited in line on June 29th? He is the same guy whose homepage is Digg.com and wants to throw a party every time Google announces a new API. This guy proves that Baggy jeans, sport cars, UGG boots and elegant coffee blends are no longer the trends that impact the world we live in. Now the trends that define our world live online. This is the arena where we connect with friends, new and old; share emotions, be they of happiness or sorrow; discover the world, of politics or celebrity gossip; and create our legacy. The Internet has harbored one trend after another, fostering the evolution of life and allowing us to make our lives and that of our companions richer more enjoyable experiences.

Users drive these trends deciding which will evolve and which will collect dust as advertisers are riding the coattails trying to keep up. But regardless the nature of a digital trend, advertisers are studying, probing, watching and reacting as trends form and evolve. Major trends from new web applications, to redefining social networks, to blurring the lines between home movies and viral advertising campaigns shape the Internet and will be gone as quick as they emerged, but will leave the Internet over and again, reinvented.

The most recent trend that has come to my attention is this whole blogging phenomenon. Not in the normal sense that everybody should have a blog, rather that myself is loosing time and inspiration to blog. Call this a placeholder post if you will because I am simply blogging for the sake of blogging with nothing particularly profound to say. I am ironically posting about my break from posting just to post.

Let us think about bloggers’ habits. Not in regards to their content, but their posting schedule and comment reactions and their person coming through their blog. How often does that happen? How often can we read a post that foreshadows future events in our favorite bloggers digital life?

Videoegg recently launched their adframes product. A new way for publishers to deliver advertiser’s rich media. This, I will call it a new medium, allows for advertisers to place just about any digital idea be it video, game, music, or anything in an elegant full page ad for a user to interact with.

The most interesting piece is that the platform is based on engagement, and only intentional engagement. The user must interact with the ad frame for 3 seconds before it launches and delivers a message. Will this affect publisher’s participation? certainly the revenue opportunities are not as accessible as they are for impressions. Advertisers are happy now but will they be able to get the placements that they want or need?

Last night at the bar I had the pleasure of talking to some agency guys. Conversations like these are refreshing, maybe because of the beer and cheese fries, or maybe the content, but these conversations almost always end in some insight.

Banter about digital soon led to Jonathan Harris and then on to web habits. The big insight is that try fascination on the web is a result of coincidence.

Physical example: looking in the encyclopedia and seeing the word NEXT to what you were searching for.

Digital Example: del.icio.us - looking up a bookmark and seeing a users other bookmarks.

The profound unique moment here is that searching on Google leads to the result. The above leads to your result PLUS a little extra you wouldn’t ave known before. So how do we embrace this idea and take it a step farther and making it more accessible and useful?