And that’s a good thing for QR Codes in general, let’s hope the technology will get used in more innovative ways than just sending people to bad advertising.

I’m predicting more quality, less quantity in QR Code based campaigns.

Last week I was at Barcamp Brugge, “The web links into the world” edition at Westtoer where I did a presentation on the state of the QR Code. Read my summary after the jump.

There is no exponential worldwide growth of interest in QR Code technology today like there was a year ago. In many countries the trend is still going strong, and in others the level on interest in QR Codes has leveled but not decreased.

Do campaigns where people are more likely have money and a smartphone. My research based on some personal tracking, Google Trends and Google Insights queries indicates that QR Code interest is going strong in Europe in urban areas, there’s a clear difference between metropolitan areas and rural areas.

Don’t target students with a QR Code campagin however, they go to colleges in big cities and may seem to be a good match but they are not. Certainly not a good target group in Belgium or countries where a mobile data plan costs you an arm and a leg.

Several online surveys, reports and studies confirm that QR Codes are far better known than they used to be. Have a look at the presentation for links to my resources and excerpts I chose to highlight.

QR Codes can be very powerful tool in helping you identify your fans, be nice to the scanner, give something back for the time they invested in scanning your code. If you don’t you may lose them.

Here are some bits of adivce:

• give at least something practical to the scanner
• make it a Fun User Experience
• give incentives (coupons, secrets, sweepstakes, …)

The “scan for boobs” slide illustrates a simple incentive quite effectively.

Thank you Westtoer for the fine venue and the smooth organization!

If you’re planning to do a QR Code campaign and want some advice, don’t hesitate to drop me a line on Twitter (@bertheymans) or at Bert @ this domain.

And there was the Barcamp Genk T-Shirt from fellow project manager Claudio Capo that I got on the same day, I definitely count that as “from the internet” too. Yay!

Last but not least I was charmed by a really cool online campaign for … get this … glass containers. Yes, someone actually created a cool publicity concept around glass containers and a part of the campaign was giving away glass bottles and jars filled with, nothing. Got that one delivered last week as well. Glass is good for the environment because you can recycle it, cowabunga!

Thank you everyone!

Duval Guillaume Brussels

Now I’m coming back to Nascom, I learned a lot, not what I thought I would, but certainly not less.

All sorts of stuff happened, like moving to another town, buying a house and the blog got neglected, that explains the ironic “Time Management” categorization. My Moleskine notebook with personal notes didn’t get negleted at all though, and I’ve been reading a lot, so expect new articles and some book reviews shortly.

Duval Guillaume got hit pretty hard by the economic crisis. I was there for about 2 months and many good people around me including my boss and people from my team got fired over my head. Advertising is notorious for being the first budget to be cut and that’s exactly what happened, business was down a lot and it wasn’t hard to tell looking around the office.

Many of my upcoming posts will have been inspired in some way or another by my experience at DG in the past months, so keep an eye out.