shameless self-promotion: Tegu is LIVE!

 

Hey! Thought I’d take a quick moment to introduce you to a pet project of mine.

Meet Tegu. A startup Toy Company that I have been involved with since 2010. Tegu “the blocks that click” are green, sustainable, beautifully design pieces of art - loaded up with magnets inside. They are unassumingly cool and once you pick them up you can’t put them down. Tegu LIVE is the first outcome of our journey together as business partners.

Think of it as an online playmate and owner’s manual. Full of ideas and instruction to inspire you to create with Tegu. Having given the block to my boys, I can attest to their quality and beauty. But I can also attest to how challenging they can be! Tegu LIVE aims at helping people through the learning and creation process by making the entire think interactive.

Would love your thoughts. There’s quite an operation behind the scenes at POKE making it all happen. Stop by sometime and we’ll show you!

- Tom

if I can dream on the road

Great synopsis of If I Can Dream by the housemates themselves. Just days to go! You can read more about If I Can Dream here.

if I can dream (big)

Yay! The folks at Mashable covered If I Can Dream again today. Pretty sweet since we’re so close to launch. (It’s set to premiere on March 2 on Hulu and IfICanDream.com.) See the latest teaser video below. 

For those that haven’t gotten the low-down yet, If I Can Dream is a live, made-for-web TV experiment — that will use Hulu as the “Television Network”, will be broadast live 24/7 at IfICanDream.com, and follow the lives of five young people – a musician, an actor, two actresses and a model – as they leave their hometowns and live together high up in Hollywood Hills – and go on their journey to stardom as their journey is documented across the Internet via Twitter, MySpace Hulu, etc.

Full disclosure this little labor of love is the baby of my little nerd tank POKE.

some great comments from mashable below

The show — with new episodes released every week — will take a reality-esque look at the lives of five aspiring artists who are trying to make it in Hollywood. A sneak peek of the episode can be seen below.

What’s especially interesting about If I Can Dream is not just the fact that it sprung from Hulu (a website) and Simon Fuller (of traditional TV fame), but that the content and format seem much more broadcast-like than typical web/TV shows.

Essentially the series has all the ingredients of a network television show, but an entirely different and experimental distribution model. It appears as if the basic premise being tested is whether or not the web as a platform can syndicate and distribute highly produced content and churn out a hit show without broadcast as a medium. Although we’ve seen web TV shows make their marks in the entertainment industry — The Guild comes to mind — we’ve yet to see this exact formula tested online. So the real question is: Can this formula pump out a hit show on the same level as a hit TV show?

Good question Jennifer. I confidently say from everyone back at POKE, we sure hope so. In a world where Hulu and Boxee are about to explode…it seems like a great wager to make. Wouldn’t you say? 

Readers, what say you?

POKE is lookin' for a few good Peeps.

Heyho.  POKE is expanding its internship program. If you’re looking for a way in the door in 2010, this is the way to do it.  

Who is POKE?
POKE is this little thing down in TriBeCa that’s been keeping me busy for a few years now. But we’re a bit difficult to define. Maybe you should take a peek?

Difficult one to define…or at least we’re afraid to label ourselves! We’re a creative and technology company first - that’s for sure. If you ask my partners, they’ll tell you:

“POKE is a leading branding, digital strategy, content, marketing, and business development company that blends creativity and technology to deliver impact and results for brands/clients and partners in a wide variety of categories and industries.”

I have no idea what that means.

We’re one of those companies that doesn’t do exactly what we “do”. Some define us as an advertising agency - but we’re scared of the “agency” stigma. We’ve been called everything from “Social Media Strategists” to “Design Firm” to “Product Development Company”. We’re none of those. But we’re all of them just the same.

The truth is we’re more about the type of people that work with us than the type of things we imagine and create. Most of us are refugees from more traditional advertising, design, branding and technology roles. Most of us also have difficulty defining ourselves as individuals. And, most of us believe we’re actually going to change the world one day. 

Does any of this sound familiar? POKE might be the place for you, and PUSH is the way to find out.

What is PUSH?
The program is all about learning through hands on experience and instruction. Finding just the right people to join our table has proven to be a daunting task to say the least. PUSH intensely focuses on rapidly and accurately identifying people who understand our approach and share our mindset. 

We’ve decided to further expand the instruction element of our PUSH program and limit the number of interns that can enroll. Just four people can now attend our program. So if you want in, you better get our attention fast.  Good luck!