Lauren Richards is CEO of Media Experts. She is blogging the Cannes International Festival of Creativity for MiC.

Another action packed day here in Cannes.  Likely the most action packed day for a media person.

The media awards are tonight and the media press conference occurred early this afternoon, where Canada’s (and Media Experts’) own Mark Sherman was waxing eloquently, I’m sure, as a member of the judging panel.

Mark can now come up for air, having been up in the judging  room every night till 7 or 8 p.m. Last night, the medals night, they worked until 9:30pm.

I am looking forward to seeing more of the best media cases. From what I’ve seen so far in the Palais, I am not very impressed. Almost all the cases I saw yesterday very execution oriented,  tactical one-offs. Many without any taste, scale or even possibility of scale. They look like creative boutique guerrilla ideas. I’m sure there are diamonds within the cases and as more come to light, I will share them with you.

I also went to the TED conference, where the motto is “Ideas Worth Spreading.” The two speakers were, I must admit, not what TED is cracked up to be.  We heard a lot about mobile connectivity to currency and the evolution of sending money back home for immigrant populations and then the next speaker took us very intensely through the pros and cons of being connected and being unplugged.  And the importance for being unplugged for thought and creativity.

TED saved the best for last, though, with poet and unbelievable 23-year-old speaker Sarah Kay. She had the audience in the palm of her hand with her energy, her intelligence, her delivery and the fresh interesting perspective she brought on her travels to India, then Japan. Check her out on YouTube, you won’t regret it. Her presentation, “When I’m a Mother What I’ll Teach My Daughter,”  is particularly special.

TED is continuing its “Ads Worth Sharing” initiative, which the non-profit started last year to encourage further engagement in communication and to raise the bar in connectivity. It  received over 1,000 submissions in the first year, and TED is now looking for new submissions to evolve the initiative.

Rounding out the early part of today was a football ( a.k.a. soccer) tournament, a fairly recent tradition here in Cannes to capitalize on the global competitive gathering and the timing association with the World Cup (in Cannes the tournament doesn’t take breaks in between).

Canada got a very unfortunate draw – the division with the Argentineans, the Japanese and the Mexicans. Some of our players were looking particularly stellar, but after being out till 4:30am a good number of them were rather grey and muttering things like “I’m sweating more than  Dom DeLouise” and “I hope you have the defibrillator‎ on hand.” But they played fabulously, earning a tie against the much fresher and faster Japanese.

Team Canada is playing again now. I  must rush back to cheer them on and resuscitate, if necessary, before heading to the next conference.