- Fluid'Advance – by Brieuc Saffré : Web, Advertising, Photo… by Brieuc

Here is the book I did with my favorite photos I took in Sydney…

I will leave Sydney and Australia coming sunday and then go back to France. My visa is expiring in one month. To sum up quickly these 11 months, it was a fantastic experience. I always dreamt to come to Sydney and I haven’t been disapointed, I love this city.

To sum up briefly the experience, here are the main points:

- My English level is much better now, that was one of the objectives of this year.

- I had the chance to meet from the beginning very nice people (some of them have a blog like Hadrien, Karim or Julien) who helped me a lot during the tough times -once again thanks to all-. I participated in differents conferences. Thank to Twitter and LinkedIn, I met and talked with many people here in the digital industry.

- I had some good experiences in the digital industry. Indeed, I worked as a freelancer in 3 different agencies (Holler, The Furnace -Havas- and RMG Connect -WPP-) in digital strategy (community management, social media, viral marketing…) or in production (websites, banner campaigns, eDM…). I wanted to stay here in Australia but my timing was not good. It was written somewhere I think, « you won’t stay in Sydney more… ». The economical crisis has been very hard for Australian agencies. Several of them closed already such as the One Center and others are talking for merging (not official yet). That meant less jobs and much less chances to get a sponsored visa (expensive option for a company and hard to get because the company must justify why it hires a foreigner instead of a local).

- I know now what I can bring to a company: digital strategy. Like many people I use the social media tools but I have good ideas to use them in a relevant way to add value to the business. I saw the aspects I love working on and where I can give my best. It will be more interesting for me to find a job now in France. I learnt a lot about social media and digital in general here and changed my sources of information.

- This year was fantastic as well for all these nice people I met, photo sessions, travels, sunsets, crazy parties, surf sessions, soccer games…

Now, I will enjoy the next 2 weeks in Japan before staying for several days in Singapour and finally go back to France.

Shibuya, Tokyo Japan by OiMax

See you later !

For several months, I take a real pleasure to twitt’… So I just wanted to share some of the best people I followed. People usually ask this when they’re new on Twitter, so now, my lists will be ready!

On Sydney Digital Industry (interesting even if you’re not there)

@hollersydney

It’s Mike Hill’s account, the agency boss. A lot of self promotion and nice links, I like their work (OK I worked there for several times).

@eunmac

Very nice person who’s one of the boss of Amnesia Razorfish. Always good links and good stuff to share.

@Ben_Phillips

Digital Strategist at Euro RSCG Sydney, seems fun, gives good digital links but not only…

@MarkPollard

Responsible for the Digital Strategy at McCann, nice person and quite active.

Of course, you can follow as well @tiphereth (especially for her very good blog digital tip), @jysmith (social media specialist), @mumbrella (to know what’s happening in the Australian digital industry).

I am not really active for the moment but I have a lot of works to deal with (in agency here, creating a website and I just created a community here that I need to manage especially to the beginning).