Michael Monello

Are big ideas relevant anymore?

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What role does technology play in the future? Does the future belong to specialists or generalists?
I think technology is a shiny object that sometimes distracts us from what’s important. To me it’s about human behavior. What are people doing and why are they doing it? And if you understand that you can apply it to any technology – current, future, whatever. So human behavior is important and technology is important only in so much as it changes human behaviors. I think the future belongs to collaborators, and I think you need both. You need the generalists who understand and can see the big picture of how things fit together, and I think you need the specialists to bring it all to life. To me it’s no different than making movies. You need the writers, producers and directors, but you also need the art department, you need the special effects guys, you need the camera department, so I see it as much the same way. You need both and you need to be a good collaborator.

Is the recession feeding creativity?
I don’t think the recession is doing anything other than cutting budgets, to be honest. I think if you’re the kind of person that has a vision for a better way of doing something, then you’re already pursuing that and working towards that. And I don’t think you need a recession to convince you of the value of doing something different. I do think budget cuts make people re-evaluate maybe what they’re doing, but I’m not sure that realization in and of itself is enough to feed the creativity. I think the kind of creativity we’re talking about just naturally comes to you whether you have a hundred million dollars or whether you have ten thousand dollars.

Do award shows matter any more, and who is qualified to judge work?
I think it’s always nice to be awarded something for great work, so I think they matter to the people who receive them, I think they matter on a personal level, and I think it’s important to do that. I think where it gets troublesome is when we look to award shows to actually light the way to the future or shine a spotlight on work that is real game-changing in a major way, because award shows tend to give awards to the things that are within the comfort zone of the people who are voting for them. And that goes to the second part of the question about who’s qualified to judge the work. I think obviously you want people who are familiar with the industry and have some experience with it and hopefully have done something meaningful. But I think at the end of the day, what’s really interesting to me about the Elect The Jury process is that it seems designed to bring in some disruption into that process, which I think can only help things and make things a lot more interesting. To bring in a group of people with very different points of view will help disrupt that comfort zone, hopefully. And I hope it works. I think it will be interesting to see.

What keeps you up at night?
Professionally it's thinking about how to grow Campfire to continue to do great work, to continue to maintain a project-based relationship with our clients, which I think goes hand in hand with the kind of work that we do and our ability to do it, and how to scale without losing what makes us special.