Latest news with #Intersection
Otago Daily Times
a day ago
- Lifestyle
- Otago Daily Times
Women at new intersection
New Dunedin art collective Women's Work Art Collective aims to give voice to older female artists and the importance of feminism in today's world, its members tell Rebecca Fox. Women "very graciously and willingly" sink under the waves of traditional feminine concerns of caring and support but it can be quite a fight to get themselves back again once those commitments ease, poet and artist Emma Cook says. "I've definitely experienced that." It is one of the reasons she has joined her mother Linda Cook and fellow Dunedin artists Anita Desoto and Ana Terry in developing the Women's Work Art Collective (WWAC) which focuses on women artists aged 50-plus, many of whom have come to their art practices later in life. Linda says that women dedicate their lives to some kind of service and support is expected but often when women get to 50 they suddenly realise they have not followed their own passions and then when they do, are often seen as being self-indulgent or frivolous. "I just think we all have our different viewpoints and our different journeys that have brought us to this group, but we all have a common interest and feeling about the female role in the world and how feminism isn't gone, it's still very much needed." Having always been a fan of collectives, Linda talked to Desoto, with whom she was sharing studio space at the time, about setting up a small group to advance the voice of older women artists and the WWAC was born. "We wanted to create a feeling of solidarity and sisterhood. I think that a sense of community in art is a real strength for people making art," Desoto says. Keeping the group small so everyone knows each other and can meet regularly to share and talk about issues was important for Linda. "Intersection" is their first exhibition and comes at quite a "poignant" time for the group given recent pay equity changes in New Zealand, they say. "We thought "Intersection" was an appropriate title, because we're bringing diverse group ideas together, diverse practices together, and it sort of feels like that's a reflection on community too," DeSoto says. When Emma was invited to join, her initial thought was she was too busy with her poetry, teaching and children to take part. "Then I thought, well, no, that's the same old story. That's why women don't do these things, because we're busy." She realised what she needed to do was get involved in something that allowed her to explore her art more consciously. While she has been writing poetry since the age of 8, it is only recently that it has merged with her love of craft. Her writing has followed her journey from teenage angst, as she's aged, had children and gone through "babydom, tweendom, teendom" to now where her oldest is 26 and her youngest is 16. "My poetry is confessional in nature, so it is quite personal, although when I say personal, I also retell the stories of my mother, my grandmothers, my aunts, so I'm really big on kind of reclaiming women's voice and women's stories and narratives, and so my poetry isn't abstract or conceptual. It tends to be very grounded in experience and very much in kind of the domestic feminine sphere, if you want to call it that, and kind of exploring what's underneath the masks that women typically find themselves wearing." She has found herself so busy "kin keeping" and making sure everyone is fed and watered and at the right place at the right time that there often seems little time for her own thoughts. "For years my poetry has been written literally on my phone using the notes app while waiting in the car for a kid to come out of whatever it is they're at." About two years ago, as her children became more independent, she started to find more time to write and along the way it collided with her passion for "craft". She returned to stitching after getting bad repetitive strain injury from knitting beanies for her brother who was fighting cancer. "I started using found objects and then embellishing them with my own words and with what I think are quite feminist sentiments and putting them on these kind of older vintage pieces in the hope that the juxtaposition creates a new message altogether." Being part of the WWAC is enabling her to share her work and have it seen. "I hope that it impacts some people, that they like it and relate to it. I've had that before through my poetry, but not through my visual art. So I'm quite interested to see how this mashup of poetry and domestic art goes down." She is also loving working with the other women. "I'm the baby of the group, so I'm the youngest, so I really love that they all have so much more wisdom and experience than I do, and so I'm just learning from them. I love the special things that happen when you're working with women in a collaborative sense. I think it's quite different." Emma hopes they can draw more attention to the truth of feminism and its importance. "I work with young women, that's my job, and I'm constantly amazed and disheartened by how many of them don't understand what feminism is or they decry it and the arguments I hear coming out of their mouths that are anti-feminist straight from TikTok. I find it quite upsetting, so I just think it would be great to kind of bring feminism back into the public conversation." Being a role model for her students is important to her so "I thought it was time I practise what I preach". "I'm always telling them to be strong and get their voice out there, especially in terms of creativity, and I think it will help me to communicate that if I'm actually doing it as well." For the WWAC's first exhibition "Intersections", Emma has made a series of 13 miniature poetry books with a cross-stitched motif on the front and two collage pieces using found vintage hand-worked linens embellished with words in colours that blend reflecting how women's work is often anonymous and discarded and giving it a voice. "And then I've done a corset, which I've done slip-stitch and then whip-stitched beads on to it and whip-stitched across the bosom with a line from one of my poems which says, we are still corseted." Just like the women who created the linens she has found in op shops, on internet market sites and donated by friends, Emma spends many hours creating her works. From the 50-plus edits each poem goes through to the physical time stitching and creating each piece — the corset alone took about 25 hours. "It looks quite simple, but it's deceptive in the fact that it's had a lot of emotional effort and a lot of physical time put into it. I've got one of my poems over it and it's called Tongue and that literally took me 10 years to write. So, you know, it's been through like so many iterations." Terry has also come into her art practice later in life having worked in other industries through to her 40s, and felt coming into a group like the WWAC was a good opportunity for her to get back into her art practice. "So that was a big motivation for me, and also giving voice to older women artists because it's a fairly young industry." She was discouraged from following an arts career when she was younger by her parents so never saw it as a serious option. "They were like you'll never make money being an artist, and actually it's probably a pretty selfish hobby to be involved in because you're not really making much money, and you're distracted by it, and you can't get on with other things." But in her late 30s and running a graphic design business she started to realise she really wanted to go to art school. "It was like, I feel there's more to life than this, you know. So that's how I got into — went and did my degree, and then I did my master's, and then I taught at art school." Now she supports those who teach art as well creates her own work which is often installation based and "conceptually abstract" using materials that have been discarded — remnants of systems. "I'm interested in looking at things that infer systems and how we operate within systems, whether that's societal or political. What the shapes and the forms might infer to sort of link back to those systems or opening up different reference points." Most importantly the ideas dictate what materials she uses, rather than the other way around. For this exhibition, using photography, she looked at interesting shapes and objects in her environment creating a triptych. "All the tyres that form most of the work really intrigued me in how they were bound and how they were piled up into this sort of midden, if you like compositionally. The way I've manipulated the photograph too is I've played with the idea of sort of almost this living form that has this sort of radiating, emanating light, if you like, from within it as well. " DeSoto, who is known for her oil paintings which flip the narrative of women represented by European art, has included in the exhibition a large work that is a reinterpretation of a Baroque painting by Jacques Jordaens (1593-1678) who painted a series of works about female fertility. At the time she painted it, the female reproductive laws in the US were changing rapidly and she felt compelled to paint something in response to that. "This painting has a group of women celebrating together about fertility, and the men in the painting have been abstracted out. And in the original painting, they're all standing around the woman, like they're dominating these female figures, and they know all about their fertility. So its the reverse of that." Another work is tiny by comparison and is in response to the invisible stories of women who migrated to New Zealand in colonial times. "I don't feel very articulate talking about many things. My painting is my voice about such things, and I do feel very strongly about them, and it is my way of expressing that in a positive way. And they're both paintings that celebrate women and their stories." Linda's work for the exhibition is smaller than her usual pieces as she wanted to be considerate to the other exhibitors, and as her works take a long time to create, especially in cooler months when the drying time is longer. Using discarded packaging materials and a powder clay "mush" which she adds pigment to, Linda layers cardboard and fills in the gaps with the mush and crevices pushing it so it "looks like wrinkled old skin". "I've enjoyed that because its quite bodily. It's quite warm when you put your hand on it, and almost soft. I felt that was quite relevant to the the female voice." She likes to put thought into naming her works, with one called "Get a grip" in reference to a saying often thrown at women. It is also a reference to her own journey in recovering from hand surgery after an accident. "So there's a bit of humour in it as well. You always got to have a laugh." TO SEE "Intersection", Women's Work Art Collective (WWAC), Olga, Dunedin until June 25.
Khaleej Times
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Khaleej Times
Meet the 18-year-old Dubai artist blending sci-fi, soundtracks and storytelling
Hlib Futymskyi stands out. With his shoulder-length copper curls and an unusual musical moniker — Digital Bell (D-Bell), the 18-year-old Dubai-based Ukrainian is not your typical teenager. A self-confessed music nerd, he is an author, lyricist, composer, and producer, currently basking in the success of his recently released book and album, Intersection. The book, a sci-fi fantasy novella, comes alive lyrically through 14 songs in the namesake album. Every aspect of Intersection — from storytelling, composition, song writing to mixing, mastering, and even the album cover — has been conceptualised and created by D-Bell in his home studio in JLT. The project that was two years in the making was released at Dubai Audio in Dubai Hills Mall. 'The idea for Intersection first came to me when I was around 16,' says D-Bell, 'I wanted to create a world where music and stories were not separate, but completely connected. The book and the album grew parallelly. I called it Intersection because everything in the story fits like one large puzzle.' The narrative is set in a crumbling futuristic mega city, where bright artificial spheres have replaced the moon, a world where the inhabitants have everything but freedom, happiness, and music. When the protagonist, who lives on the 719th floor, finds an old jukebox, its musical notes rejuvenate the city. The plot turns in each chapter are played out through a range of emotions and genres in the soundtrack. Themes of loneliness, identity, and quest for happiness are central to the story. The book explores how these issues manifest in a hyperconnected, yet emotionally disconnected society. By blending music and literature, Intersection steers audiences through an immersive experience, with songs shifting musical genres — from jazz and opera to folk, electronic and rock. 'Each story corresponds to a specific song, making the music an extension of the book. Much like a movie soundtrack, the reader can relive the narrative through a medley of sounds,' reveals D-Bell. In the storyline, when the Floating Park, the last place where artists and musicians gathered, was destroyed, it swept all creativity from the city. To capture the event, D-Bell wrote and composed the song Skies are Blue, an opera piece featuring Spanish singer Isabel Canada Luna and opera singer Sophia, performed with a live orchestra and recorded at the Firdaus Studio in Dubai. 'The song fuses electronic and classical music with a full orchestra, in which fading piano notes and distorted echoes represent the emotions of memories breaking apart,' he says. In the book, when the city rediscovers music, the narrative is played out through Delusion, a 1980s synth-pop number created by D-Bell in collaboration with Ukrainian vocalist Verona. In Silence, the audiophile included Ukrainian folk music and in Surface, he experimented with drum and bass. D-Bell and his family moved from Kiev, Ukraine, to Dubai eight years ago. Last year, he graduated from the Nibras International School and, since then, has been focusing on his album while searching for study options that would let him merge his interests in storytelling, music and technology. He reminisces about a childhood surrounded by music and dance. 'For as long as I can recollect, there was always music at home. I loved listening to the soulful voice of Whitney Houston, the timeless jazz of Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong, iconic songs by Queen and powerful dance performances of Michael Jackson.' It helped that his family, especially his mother, Maryna, a watercolour artist, encouraged his creativity and self-expression. D-Bell's artistic journey began with a fascination for dance. It was while perfecting his moves for one of his performances that he felt a sudden urge to compose its music as well. This led to him teaching himself to play the guitar, the ukulele, and the synthesiser. By 12, he had embraced the nickname D-Bell, an ode to his love for sounds and songs. 'I started my journey with dance, focusing on freestyle. But over time, music became my primary focus,' he explains. When he is deeply inspired, it is music that D-Bell turns to, to convey his feelings. 'Every moment, every place carries a unique emotional texture. Seeing how people interact, love, struggle, and grow often brings up emotions in me that flow naturally into melodies and lyrics. Some moments are so powerful that they demand to be translated into music.' In Intersection too, its music and art that fix the broken world. Besides music, D-Bell is passionate about philosophy, science, and how technology connects with human emotions. 'To me, philosophy asks the 'why', science answers the 'how', and technology helps us in implementing both. I also derive heavily from philosophies that suggest that everything is interconnected through a universal consciousness. Intersection is an exploration of the merging of these fields shaping human experience and creativity.' In spite of being a fan of new age tech, he stayed away from using AI in the making of Intersection, crafting it instead as a deeply personal creation. When not composing D-Bell enjoys traveling, collecting and restoring vintage audio tech, analogue equipment and old cassette players. Did we not say this teen was in a league of his own?
Martechvibe
06-05-2025
- Business
- Martechvibe
Intersection Launches LinkNYC Ad Portal for Local Businesses
Intersection's Self-Service Ad Portal makes advertising on LinkNYC more attainable for businesses with marketing budgets, small or large. Staff Writer 47 minutes ago Intersection, an out-of-home media and technology company, and LinkNYC, the public-private partnership that created a free public Wi-Fi network, announced the official launch of the LinkNYC Self-Service Ad Portal. Featuring expanded free offerings and a lower cost of entry for paid campaigns, advertising on LinkNYC is now easier for New York City's small business community. Intersection's launch of the portal includes an enhancement of LinkNYC's LinkLocal free advertising program. Eligible New York City-based community organisations and local small businesses can now display ads on six LinkNYC screens at a time—up from four—at no cost. The update also includes customisable advertising templates and colours, the ability to add a logo or QR code, and an interactive map to help advertisers select optimal LinkNYC locations. ALSO READ: Grab-And-Go CX Is The Future 'These upgrades to LinkLocal will provide hundreds more community-based businesses and nonprofits with opportunities to amplify their messaging through the most coveted out-of-home advertising space in New York City,' said Margaux Knee, Chief Administrative Officer of LinkNYC. 'In 2024 alone, LinkNYC provided over $4 million in free advertising space, and we're just getting started.' The LinkNYC Self-Service Portal also includes LinkDirect, Intersection's new offering for purchasing larger, branded LinkNYC campaigns, which is designed to accommodate budgets of all sizes. LinkDirect allows advertisers to select specific screen locations and campaign dates. Users can upload custom creatives and include a QR code to boost engagement. To celebrate National Small Business Month, advertisers can enjoy a 20% discount [Code: SHOPSMALL20] on their first order through LinkDirect during the month of May. 'LinkNYC is the ideal platform for New York City's vibrant small business community,' said Jonathan Fuller, Chief Revenue Officer at Intersection. 'With thousands of LinkNYC kiosks across all five boroughs, we're excited to help local businesses of all sizes and budgets connect with their neighbourhoods in a meaningful way.' 'Thanks to our ongoing partnership with LinkNYC and Intersection, more local entrepreneurs will promote their goods and services directly in the communities they serve,' said New York City Department of Small Business Services Commissioner Dynishal Gross. 'The expanded Self-Service Ad Portal preserves the ease of use small business owners value, while introducing new tools — like embedded QR codes and the ability to choose specific LinkNYC kiosks — to make ads even more impactful and measurable.' 'We appreciate this effort to enhance an already powerful marketing tool that gives small businesses greater visibility, and helps residents and visitors discover the local shops and services that make our neighbourhoods — and New York City — shine.' ALSO READ: Ad Fraud Is Eating Up Brand Revenue The Martechvibe team works with a staff of in-house writers and industry experts. View More digital advertisingIntersectionLinkNYCSelf-Service Portal Locala's omnichannel advertising platform leverages granular insights and cutting-edge AI to help marketers plan, activate, and measure campaigns that are personalised to the local consumer. It specialises in transforming complex mobility and consumer data into actionable audience insights, fueling advanced media strategies. VISIT WEBSITE Blue Prism is a global software provider, offering ROM 2, an intelligent automation implementation methodology that empowers teams to scale their digital workflow. 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VISIT WEBSITE Basis Tecnologies (formerly known as Centro), is a programmatic advertising platform, offering ad management tools for search, social and site direct via a single interface. Its flagship products are Basis Assistant and Basis Automate+. Basis Assistant is a Chrome extension, connecting 20+ platforms and tools, and Basis Automate+ is a digital advertising automation tool for simplifying campaign process. VISIT WEBSITE AppsFlyer is a mobile attribution company, helping mobile advertisers to identify their ad network. It offers a measurement suite, giving app marketers full visibility into their customer journeys while preserving their privacy. Utilising its AI-powered Creative Optimisation platform, marketers can formulate their creative strategy. VISIT WEBSITE Adtriba is a cross-channel digital marketing management platform based on data-driven attribution modelling. Its solutions include Adtriba Triangulation, enabling advertisers to witness the integration of diverse measurement methods, such as Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM), Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) and Incrementality Testing. VISIT WEBSITE Adobe Experience Cloud offers connected advertising solutions with its natively integrated Adobe Advertising platform. Its consultancy-based reporting options come with AI-powered optimisation features, helping advertisers analyse their ad performance via 200+ measurement metrics. Utilising its connected TV (CTV) and search, social, and commerce tools, marketers can optimise their customer acquisition strategy. VISIT WEBSITE specialises in Conversational AI, generating autonomous conversations that appear human-like. These conversations form the foundation of brand engagement. Their AI-powered, no-code Dynamic Automation Platform manages around two billion conversations from a multitude of channels in numerous languages. VISIT WEBSITE Sprinklr offers a comprehensive suite of 250+ AI-intent bot templates for various industry verticals to accelerate bot development. Its specialised AI and compliant rule engine enables marketers to modify and automate their promotional campaigns for better engagement via suggestion-based personalised bots. VISIT WEBSITE Meta's new class of generative AI features and creative tools allow users to create and share custom stickers or update the visual style of their photos with a simple text prompt. They can also chat with 28 different AIs and get unique perspectives on topics like travel, games and food. VISIT WEBSITE is a UI-based platform that allows marketers to create a chatbot quickly and deploy it easily on multiple channels. Leveraging the capabilities of its conversational builder, enterprises can build the Dialogflow using dialogue messages. Some of its popular offerings include XO: Experience Optimisation and GALE(Beta). VISIT WEBSITE IBM watsonx Assistant is an interactive virtual agent that utilises natural language and AI, enabling users to set it up on their app and website. It offers fast and accurate responses to customers, enhancing their overall experience and satisfaction with its adaptive learning capabilities. VISIT WEBSITE Haptik helps enterprises manage their customer lifecycle with generative AI-powered conversational solutions to boost marketing and sales. It offers Contakt and Interakt to enhance overall CX, where Interakt enables marketers to send hyper-targeted and personalised campaigns to drive customers to take action on WhatsApp. VISIT WEBSITE Dialogflow is an all-in-one platform for developing chatbots, voice bots, and virtual agents using natural language understanding and Google AI. It helps marketing teams create conversational agents that can handle common customer requests and issues, such as FAQs, and order status at scale. VISIT WEBSITE Dialpad is a fully integrated unified conversation intelligence platform that utilises ongoing ML(Machine Learning) algorithms and does not require coding to configure a chatbot. It offers real-time insights and tips, helping marketing teams customise their approach for every customer. VISIT WEBSITE is a low code-no code, enterprise-grade generative AI platform offering readily available LLMs for CX transformations. Its omnichannel reporting and analytics suite for marketing enables organisations to streamline their customer journeys. VISIT WEBSITE is a global conversational AI technology provider optimised for operational efficiency at scale. It offers self-learning AI capabilities that emphasise Natural Language Understanding (NLU) along with intent suggestions. VISIT WEBSITE Avaamo is an all-in-one conversational AI platform for enterprises offering a suite of industry-specific skills developed to automate and resolve common use cases. It offers Outreach, which enables marketers to educate and engage with customers across existing touchpoints through proactive and personalised communication. VISIT WEBSITE Amazon Lex offers fully managed conversational AI interfaces with advanced natural language models to design, build, test, and deploy conversational interfaces in applications. It enables sales and marketing teams to automate user tasks in their applications like the CRM and across any digital channel. VISIT WEBSITE Zendesk is an AI-powered customer feedback software provider, offering customer satisfaction (CSAT) software to businesses across multiple industries. Its marketplace offers 1600+ apps and integrations, enabling marketers to create a complete customer feedback system. VISIT WEBSITE UserVoice provides product feedback management software for SaaS businesses. Its UserVoice Validation tool delivers actionable user insights to inform roadmap strategy. From testing ideas to ensuring satisfaction with released features, it helps research and marketing teams gather quick user feedback throughout the entire product lifecycle. VISIT WEBSITE Twilio provides integrated Mindful Feedback functionality within its Flex offering, enabling marketers to automatically take action based on real-time customer feedback. It automatically collects customer feedback after Flex interactions by capturing feedback over post-call voice IVR, outbound voice IVR, conversational SMS, Web SMS, email, and web surveys. VISIT WEBSITE Trustpilot offers ML and AI-powered feedback management tools, helping marketers build trust and loyalty through customer reviews. Its AI-driven Review Insights tool enables marketers to identify growth areas from negative feedback, whereas its Image Generator tool lets them enhance social media engagement. VISIT WEBSITE Survey Monkey is a global online survey and forms tech stack provider, offering AI-fueled market research solutions to businesses. Its enterprise feedback management program provides 250+ templates with the capabilities of customisation, allowing organisations to build tailored survey forms. VISIT WEBSITE Sprinklr is a unified customer experience platform (CXM), offering AI-powered feedback management capabilities with its flagship product: Sprinklr Surveys. It integrates solicited customer feedback with unified-CXM data, enabling brands to derive meaningful, actionable insights. Utilising its genAI-powered survey builder, marketers can create conversational surveys to streamline their NPS strategies. VISIT WEBSITE Salesforce is a comprehensive customer-oriented technology provider offering a feedback management suite. Salesforce's survey responses help marketers create personalised surveys based on their existing customers' data. Some of the supported applications of its feedback management platform are genAI-powered survey form development and sentiment-insights-based survey collections. VISIT WEBSITE QuestionPro is an online feedback software provider, offering ready-made survey templates to businesses across 40+ countries. Leveraging the capabilities of its customer satisfaction templates, advertisers and marketers can create and gather tailored questions. VISIT WEBSITE Qualtrics is an all-in-one customer experience solution provider, offering website & app feedback tools for organisations to collect customer feedback efficiently. Its digital experience analytics capabilities combined with DXA integrations, bring together verbal and behavioural data for in-depth analysis of user feedback. VISIT WEBSITE HubSpot is a one-stop marketing platform, providing customer feedback software under its Service Hub offerings. Its pre-built APIs include net promote score (NPS), customer effort score (CES), and customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys, allowing marketers to strengthen their customer loyalty strategy. VISIT WEBSITE Medallia is a comprehensive platform, enabling marketers to capture feedback from all customer touch points. Some of its popular feedback management software capabilities include Sense360 for analysing consumer spending, Medallia Video to automatically extract meaningful insights from customer's feedbacks and Agile Research for creating branded surveys in real-time. VISIT WEBSITE Zeotap lets brands integrate, unify, segment and orchestrate customer data, fostering a cookieless future. It offers a 'Non-Customer Entity Data' feature that helps marketers to integrate both customer and non-customer entity data. VISIT WEBSITE Twilio provides, Twilio Segment, an AI-powered CDP, enabling marketers to streamline their personalised customer engagement journeys. It brings together clean, consented customer data for real-time insights with 450+ pre-built connectors. VISIT WEBSITE Syntasa provides data-ready CDP capabilities, equipping marketers with essential tools to prepare their customer data. It offers real-time sentiment analytics capabilities, helping enterprises derive behavioural insights from unified user profiles to foster hyper-personalised experiences. VISIT WEBSITE SAP is a company-wide customer data management platform, helping marketers improve engagement, conversion, and retention. It offers a genAI-powered data model, enabling enterprises to unify their B2B and B2C customers' profiles to reach their personalisation goals. VISIT WEBSITE Oracle is a global database management company, providing CDP solutions, under its flagship product: Oracle Unity. Its AI-powered models enable marketers to create hyper-personsalised campaigns with predictive insights by streamlining real-time customer data from heterogeneous sources. VISIT WEBSITE Growthloop is a composable CDP platform, allowing marketing and sales team to action their data at scale. It offers GrowthLoop Audience Builder, enabling marketers to initiate their lead generation functions. VISIT WEBSITE Adobe Experience Cloud offers a real-time CDP, letting users create high-value audience segments for B2C and B2B use cases across their marketing funnel. It follows a cookieless marketing approach to automatically unify customer data across various online and offline channels in real-time. VISIT WEBSITE ActionIQ is a composable CDP platform that offers audience segmentation, acquisition marketing, and Customer 360 capabilities. It integrates analytical tools, enabling marketers to collect and analyse their first-party customer data at scale. VISIT WEBSITE Zoho CRM leverages automation and comprehensive analytics to empower any sales team, fostering stronger customer loyalty. Ideal for both small businesses and enterprises, this software enables enhanced productivity and tailored solutions through predictive intelligence. VISIT WEBSITE Zendesk offers Zendesk Sell, an easy-to-deploy CRM platform that is simple to deploy and navigate, catering to businesses of any scale. Its mobile-friendly Sell app has the functionalities of geolocation, helping sales and marketing teams. Offering an all-in-one CRM platform, organisations can implement use cases like prospecting, engagement, lead generation and communication capabilities. VISIT WEBSITE SugarCRM is a global CRM software provider, helping marketing, sales, and service teams improve efficiency through automation, data, and intelligence in near real-time. It offers Sugar Market, an all-in-one marketing automation platform that helps marketers to automate their campaign with higher ROI. VISIT WEBSITE Salesforce is a one-stop sales and support CRM software that regularly updates customer records, tracks emails and calls, and creates organised support processes for quicker customer responses. Its simple and scalable infrastructure is ideal for businesses of all sizes. VISIT WEBSITE Pipedrive stands out with its emphasis on automation, tailorability, and seamless integration. Purposefully built to enhance the efficiency and productivity of sales professionals, this CRM solution has an intuitive setup and robust capabilities. It facilitates lead generation, comprehensive sales analytics, and seamless business expansion. VISIT WEBSITE Oracle NetSuite CRM, a component of Oracle's business software suite, is for all midsize and booming businesses that want a comprehensive, integrated CRM solution with ERP capabilities. Using it, customers and partners can directly interact with the platform, freeing the additional work load for their sales team. VISIT WEBSITE Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales represents a robust cloud-based CRM solution brimming with features such as pipeline assessment, relationship analytics, and conversational intelligence. It utilises AI-powered insights to provide actionable intelligence via predictive analytics, lead scoring and sentiment analysis. VISIT WEBSITE Less Annoying is a CRM software that utilises a straightforward search feature within its contact management system, making it easy to track contacts. It is ideal for small-sized businesses and offers a highly intuitive and user-friendly interface. VISIT WEBSITE Insightly offers CRM software solutions for enterprises looking to understand their audience data across various marketing functions. It integrates seamlessly with third-party apps, streamlining workflow automation, including bulk emailing and report generation. VISIT WEBSITE HubSpot's sleek dashboard with consolidated CRM tools simplify complex customer data, further transforming it into meaningful insights. Complementing typical CRM functionalities, HubSpot provides tailored options, including conversation intelligence and email monitoring. VISIT WEBSITE Apptivo delivers adaptable and web-based CRM solutions, enabling marketing and sales teams to streamline all customer service requirements across various devices and browsers. Despite its focused feature set, it encompasses over 65 interconnected applications alongside a robust sales pipeline management tool, ensuring efficient tracking of potential leads without any downtime. VISIT WEBSITE Sitecore offers composable cloud solutions with its flagship products, Sitecore Experience Platform(XP) and Sitecore Experience Manager (XM). They help marketers to overcome scalability challenges. Some of its features include intuitive visual editing, headless delivery, marketing automation, scalable personalisation, data and machine learning capabilities. VISIT WEBSITE Salesforce Experience Cloud is a platform that helps enterprises link clients, partners, and employees to securely exchange information and documents. Built on its Customer 360 platform, Salesforce's DXP ensures seamless integration with any solution in the Salesforce ecosystem. VISIT WEBSITE Oracle Cloud offers a comprehensive suite of platform-based marketing automation solutions for personalised B2B and B2C automation campaigns. Some of its featured products are Eloqua Marketing Automation, CrowdTwist Loyalty and Engagement, and Unity Customer Data Platform. VISIT WEBSITE Optimizely is a digital experience platform (DXP) provider that offers Optimizely One, an easy-to-use and fully integrated suite. It provides a single, unified workflow with thoughtfully embedded AI and machine-learning algorithms, accelerating work across the entire marketing lifecycle. VISIT WEBSITE OpenText offers a cloud-native, scalable platform for enterprises to streamline their marketing functions. It provides fully composable content management, digital asset management, creative workflows, personalisation, targeting and customer data technologies in one place, ensuring a holistic approach to B2B, B2E and B2C experiences. VISIT WEBSITE Neptune DXP is a PaaS(Platform-as-a-Service) provider, helping marketing teams build custom apps based on modular, reusable application building blocks. The company offers flexible environments to businesses across different verticals, further providing personalised digital solutions at scale. VISIT WEBSITE Magnolia is a composable DXP that comes with no-code connector packs and low-code micro-frameworks for third-party integrations. It also offers an open-source version alongside its commercial plans enabling enterprises to build tailored use cases. VISIT WEBSITE Liferay DXP helps marketers deliver personalised and connected digital experiences across a broad range of channels, including customer portals, websites, intranets, mobile apps, and connected devices. It offers intuitive CMS, user analytics, and site management tools that businesses need to launch, test and optimise digital experiences for faster go-to-market. VISIT WEBSITE Powered by IBM Consulting, IBM iX offers a composable DXP, providing a comprehensive solution to make enterprises' systems future-ready. Utilising its data-driven insights and intelligent workflows, marketers can design and deliver human-centred experiences across the customer lifecycle. VISIT WEBSITE HCL Digital Experience (DX), forms part of a wider HCL Customer Experience (CX) product portfolio, offering core capabilities such as content management, DAM, CDP called Signals, and low-code application development. It provides services in government, life sciences, insurance, financial services, and other verticals. VISIT WEBSITE Contentstack is a headless CMS and Composable Digital Experience Platform (DXP) solution provider that helps marketers gain a competitive edge. It recently launched into Google Cloud Marketplace, and is also available on Microsoft Azure and AWS. It seamlessly enables mid-market brands to adopt its omnichannel campaign engine to drive higher conversions and sales. VISIT WEBSITE Bloomreach Commerce Experience Cloud provides businesses an edge with its modular capabilities: Content Management System (CMS), Discovery features for search and merchandising optimisation, and Engagement tools such as Customer Data Platforms (CDP) for personalisation and analytics. VISIT WEBSITE Adobe Experience Cloud offers a comprehensive set of services specifically designed to address the day-to-day requirements for personalised customer experience at scale. Its platform helps manage different digital content and assets to improve customer satisfaction. Some of its products include Adobe Gen Studio, Experience Manager Sites, Real-time CDP, and Marketo Engage. VISIT WEBSITE Acquia offers DXP solutions, comprising of two main elements: Acquia Drupal Cloud and Acquia Marketing Cloud. It can be accessed in both platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) with additional components such as Site Factory for multisite management, digital asset management (DAM), CDP, personalisation, and Campaign Studio. VISIT WEBSITE
Gulf Today
15-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Read and listen: D-BELL tunes his book into music
D-BELL is an 18-year-old composer, producer, audio engineer and songwriter, based in Dubai. He spent the last couple of years working on something what he calls truly unique — the music project, Intersection. 'It's not just an album; it's a complete universe of sound, story, and philosophy,' D-BELL says. 'Each song on the album is directly connected to a chapter of a fantasy novel that I wrote myself; so everything in this project is entirely my creation, from the music to the book.' He adds that 'the music is the story, and the album follows the book in order. It's not just inspired by the story — it is the story. When you listen to the album, it's like watching a movie through sound. If you read the book while listening, the music uncovers deeper layers of meaning.' What sets Intersection apart is perhaps that every aspect of the project is handmade. D-BELL made a conscious decision not to use any AI in the creation process. From the music to the visuals and the storytelling, it has all been crafted by hand. The album cover, for example, features jukeboxes, which play a central role in both the album and the book. They represent intersections of different worlds, genres, and ideas coming together, reflecting the essence of the entire project. Not only the music, but also the illustrations in the book were made by hand. Musically, Intersection blends a variety of genres. A real orchestra was recorded, with musicians from opera and classical music, and there are also jazz singers, pop singers, electronic, and alternative musicians. There's a huge diversity in the musical styles and genres, which combined bring something fresh to the table. D-BELL worked with musicians from all over the world to make sure the project captured everything he envisioned. The contents ranging from the drawings to the design, is also completely original. Each piece is detailed, to ensure that the visual side of the project is as meaningful and immersive as the music itself. The project also blends all kinds of art — drawing, music, literature, and more. It can be said to be an authentic intersection of creative expression, showcasing various forms of art in a single cohesive experience. Some exclusive events set Intersection on its way. The first look at the album happened at DJ Corner, where D-BELL shared the sonic world he built. Then, the release was celebrated at Dr. Head, where the music pulsed through the best and most expensive speakers in the world. Well-known musicians and industry professionals came to check it out. The next event is scheduled for March 22 at the Dubai Audio Showroom. Here, not only will the music be listened in high fidelity, but the actual book will be experienced in a physical way, combining both the music and the story. 'I started working on this project when I was 16, and now at 18, I'm excited to finally share Intersection with the world,' says D-BELL. 'It's not just an album — it's an experience, something that I believe people can connect with on a deeper level.' Intersection, he adds, is a living, breathing world built through sound, story and art. Every song, every chapter, every illustration is designed to immerse the audience in a multi-sensory experience. The themes explore the nature of reality, fate, and the intersections of different cultures and ideas. With each listen and read, new layers of meaning are sure to unfold, with rewards for those who dive deeper. Intersection also isn't just about the music — it's a journey filled with hidden meanings, philosophical themes, and puzzles to explore. There are influences from Eastern philosophy and concealed layers that call out to be uncovered through multiple listens or readings. At its core, Intersection is of course about connection — between genres, disciplines, and people. It invites listeners and readers to explore, question and feel and is a firm step in what is just the beginning of D-BELL's creative journey.
