Intruder Alert!

Q: Introduce us to yourself and your company.
Hi, my name is Thierry BEZIER, my company is Intruders TV, and I'm also the head of digital at "Fred & Farid" . Even if I'm french, I'm not your typical European stereotype, half-Mexican, half-french I spent around 4 years in Japan, working as a web project manager for some local companies and also 2 years for a sub-company of Dentsu. Then I came back Europe to found Intruders TV, Intruders TV is the first international web tv about the innovating Internet industry, covering 6 countries we try to bring the best interviews, event coverage of the industry. We have around 400 000 videos watched every month on our network... I'm still the co founder of Intruders TV but I also joined "Fred & Farid", an advertising agency based in Paris. Fred & Farid are certainly one of the most demanded creatives in advertisement. They did some amazing jobs that you can watch on Youtube, and you have certainly watched some of their commercial wherever you are.... I lead for them the whole digital branch of the agency and it's great cause I used to work into the advertising sector as a web project manager before, so it's really a dream job.

Q: Interactive Producers come from all walks of life, they are a hybrid of talents, tell us about your background and how you got interested in digital production?
Well you know kids, when they are young they all wants to become, cops, doctors, astronauts or whatever, As far as I remember I always wanted to create digital graphics, I had a computer when I was 7, it was an old amstrad 464, and I was writting lines and lines of "basic language" to create characters, software or whatever... from that time I knew I wanted to "create things on computer" even if that job hadn't no names in my childhood I have always stick to this idea...
When I was old enough I understood I would never be a good CGI artist (lol) but everybody was asking me to do some "internet jobs" and little by little I was driven to the web. For a traveler like me there is nothing good as many kind of different people with different culture and language using the same tools, this is what I still like to do : "create things on a computer" for many kind of people, the web is only a way to transmit that.

Q: How do you stay on top of emerging technologies and keep your team informed and motivated?
Thanks to Intruders TV, we meet around a 1000 of startups every year, it's an incredible way to know what's going on on the market, in my team almost everybody is a blogger and "a geek". We are always sending to each others tons of links of create technologies we would like to do. We also go to a lot of conference, there is nothing better than listening somebody explaining his vision and why his technology will change the world. Being updated about the web technologies is mandatory for us, and our clients love working with us, because every time we work for them there is at least a very innovating proposal... Clients who comes to Fred & Farid, comes for exceptional tv commercial experience... we must be the same at the web departments... and that's a very exciting challenge!

Q: What does your ideal client/project look like?
The good thing is that we already have some of those "ideal client", an ideal client is a client who is not afraid to try new things with us : a new technology, a new way to experience the web... A client ready to take some risk with us to create something unique. Even if it's not an "everyday client" it happens, and it just feel so great when we understand perfectly each others... About the perfect project, I would say something that nobody on our market has never done, that makes tons of PR for our Clients, the kind of projects that totally reflects my team, don't get me wrong, I love doing simple websites, but a "changing the world" project is a far better challenge for us, even if it's risky.

Q: What was the best project you have ever worked on?
Honestly, I always think that the next one coming is the best, but I'm quiet proud of our Iphone application for Van Cleef & Arpels which was out the first week of the application store, it's just great for our client to be the first one if his sector to be there, great execution and good download stats... can you ask for more? If I could I would tell you about the things we are preparing in 2009, but I clearly believe that the best project will be in 2009.

Q: How many projects are you comfortable producing at one given time?
It's a brand new web department with a brand new team... Clearly I don't know how many projects we can handle together at once... for now with 5 projects we are alright, but if we get more projects we will certainly hire more people !

Q: What does your dream production team look like?
Wow, hard to tell, I would say mine (mainly web projects manager & a few specialists) and I would had a couple of developers and web art directors, I believe in small teams, and in team works around a pool of web projects manager. I believe in a development & designer team the whole managed by some projects manager, having a couple of specialists around like SEO, consultants or more would be nice too... If they are all motivated that would be enough to me!

Q: How do you ensure that your client's best interests are met?
We work closely with the sales team and our client representative, our doors are always open to explain them as clear as possible what we are doing and the choices we are making. Most of the time our biggest enemy is misunderstanding, taking time to do a screencast, or a live explanation of the what we are doing and how we are making it is no wasting time, but a great way to limit the modifications. Clients are looking more and more for results, we try to makes them face reality and to be transparent on the results... honesty is always the key.

Q: What is your vision of what the next phase of our industry is going to look like?
It's a social world, and whatever you'll do this year it would have to be social and shareable, I'm not thinking about facebook likes, but more about new way of communication, through mobile, web, desktop... and more, the Internet is not anymore on a computer but everywhere else, problem is that the audience is also diluted and they need the best experience on sometimes the cheapest devices... The web is going everywhere, and we have to be everywhere, the Iphone is not the only phone in the world and the real audience is not web producers. ;-)

Q: Please share a snippet of wisdom that you would like to impart on our readers.
hehe, web producers don't have any wisdom, we have adventurers, we sacrifice a lot of things, nights, and family to change the world, there is something I believe about our job.. It's that you can't think of it as a job, the day you think you don't want to go to work, or that you are getting bored leave your job and do something else, being a web producer it's waking up every morning thinking how your work can move people and change (a little bit) the world...

I hope this can be useful,

Thanks for this great opportunity,

Thierry