Beach parties. Hotel parties. Rooftop parties. All along the Croisette, all week long, there are countless opportunities to meet and mingle and dance with fellow creative types. Some of these parties are fairly open and easy to get into. Some require highly-prized invitations. And some are so exclusive, you only hear about them after the fact.

At some point in the evening (usually while you're already at a perfectly amazing party), a text message comes in telling you to get to the so-and-so party. Now the challenge is to somehow get into this supposedly better event. Here's how that goes.

The Three Voices You Hear When Trying to Get Into a Party at Cannes

Guy at entrance: "Are you on the list?"

You: "Uh, no."

Your brain: OH CRAP.

Guy at entrance: "Sorry, but you can't get in if you're not on the list."

You: "Really?"

Your brain: THIS PARTY SOUNDS EXCLUSIVE AND AMAZING. I HAVE TO GET IN.

Guy at entrance: "Nothing I can do. This is an invitation-only event."

You: "I know someone who got in earlier. She told me to come by."

Your brain: MY WEEK WILL BE RUINED IF I CAN'T GET IN.

Guy at entrance: "Okay, then. Come on in."

You: "Wow, cool. Thanks, man!"

Your brain: CRAP. THIS PARTY MUST SUCK.

Cannes can be overwhelming.

Here, you sit in on thought-provoking sessions. You randomly meet inspiring people. You get challenged in stimulating workshops. You see work that makes you want to go back home and try even harder. Add in the sights and sounds and smells and tastes of the French Riviera and you have an intoxicating brew. Oh, and there are plenty of intoxicating brews being had here, as well.

It can be more than a little overwhelming. At any given time, you have to choose what to do, who to spend time with, and what sessions to attend. There's no way you can do even a small fraction of what's going on here at the festival. You make choices.

And while your senses are being overloaded, your brain just silently goes to work in the background trying to piece everything together in a way that makes some semblance of sense. A few of the dots start getting connected. Oh, here's something that will help me on that big project waiting for me back home. Oh, this speaker and that speaker are saying the same thing, but from different perspectives. Oh, I see how this will impact what I do in the future. Oh, this person knows that person and just introduced me to three more people. 

Everyone will connect their dots in their own way, of course, because no two people are experiencing the exact same week.

To me, I'm struck by the dual concepts of complexity and simplicity. We're at a time when storytellers can write television shows with intricate, complex storylines because technology has changed the way we watch shows. We're also at a time when Twitter has become a primary news source for many people. Extreme complexity. Extreme simplicity. It seems to me that maybe the stuff in the middle will have a hard time getting noticed as we move forward.

But my brain's still sorting it all out. And I still have a couple more days to add a few more more dots.

Some practical advice today from the man who played a naturally-gifted baseball prodigy in the movie "The Natural."

In a wide-ranging conversation at an overflowing Palais, Robert Redford discussed storytelling (he's drawn to the "space in between the obvious"), risk-taking (think of life as an adventure and seek it out), and failure (it's a step forward, not the end of the road). And he made some good points about branding.

First off, a brand has to be authentic. It has to be real. How authentic and real? Redford, himself, bristles at the word "brand." He doesn't like the word at all.

Then, a brand has to offer quality. Tell a story well told. Touch an emotion.

Being authentic and offering quality leads to trust. If you're trusted, that's a powerful thing.

It's a simple, but effective formula that Redford used for his own Hollywood career, his many philanthropic efforts, and in the creation of the powerhouse Sundance brand. Obviously, he doesn't like to talk about branding. Instead, authenticity and quality simply ooze out of his pores.

Like Roy Hobbs in "The Natural", he simply does. The best brands do.

Back-to-back sessions on Monday left me feeling inspired.

First off, Malcolm Gladwell. He talked about how you shouldn't want to finish first. You want to finish third. He gave examples of people like Steve Jobs and companies like Google who have changed the world, not by being originators of an idea, but by being tweakers. Innovators make something. But it's the people who make something out of it, who find a better way to do something with that innovation, who make the real impact.

I'm not leaving Cannes with any gold statues, so I found this session comforting.

Gladwell's session was followed by a fascinating talk by Jonah Lehrer on the science of creativity. Speaking to a bunch of driven creative types, Lehrer talked about how truly breakthrough ideas require more relaxation. More blue sky. More blue ocean.

He had much more to say, obviously, but I didn't need to hear any more. I was inspired to visit the sandy beach just a few yards away from the festival. There, I sat with my toes in the water and pondered how lucky I am to not win a Gold Lion.

I’ll be heading to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity soon. To get myself ready to walk into the world’s most creative lion’s den, so to speak, I asked a few of my friends if they’d chat with me about the State of Creativity in 2011. Those friends said no, so I asked these people instead.

Next up: “Weird Al” Yankovic, three-time Grammy award winning artist whose 13th studio album, “Alpocalypse,” will be released June 21.

You had your first hit in 1982 and have no doubt seen it all in this business in the years since. Loaded question, I know, but what's the state of creativity in the music business in 2011?

Wow, starting with the easy ones, huh? Well, it’s tempting to be flip and say that the industry is creatively bankrupt at this point, but of course that’s not really accurate. Pop music has always been kind of ridiculous. It’s nothing new. Pop music is always changing, always morphing, but much of it seems to be variations on the same stale universal themes—albeit, in some cases, today we’re likely to hear much more graphic or provocative iterations of those themes.

I think a lot of the creativity in the music industry these days is coming from the marketing side—the industry as they knew it collapsed a decade ago, and they’ve been struggling to stay afloat. When your back is against the wall like that, you tend to get very creative very quickly.

Any kid can post a parody song or video on YouTube in a matter of minutes. I guess that's both good and bad. How has technology changed the way you approach what you do?

The Internet has been a double-edged sword for people in the music business. In this post-Napster world, a new generation has grown up thinking that all music is free for the taking, which doesn’t exactly help artists’ sales numbers. But at the same time, the Internet is an incredible promotional tool—with a little marketing skill, you can make millions of people aware of your wonderful new album that they’re most likely just going to download for free anyway.

A couple other Internet pet peeves: There are a lot of “funny” songs floating around the web with my name attached to them, even though—surprise—they’re not really by me. Honestly, it does my reputation no favors when people are tricked into thinking that some vulgar or mediocre song is part of my oeuvre. Also, there are tens of thousands of people on YouTube doing song parodies—that’s great for them, I suppose, but that means that I’ll never again be the only (and certainly not the first) person to parody any given hit song. But, I just put my blinders on and proceed boldly ahead, hoping people won’t notice that I’m the 20,000th person on the planet to do a Miley Cyrus parody.

On the plus side, digital distribution gives me the potential to be a lot more timely with my releases, which is a great feature if your material is topical, which mine often is. A couple years ago I was able to think of an idea for a parody, get permission, write it, record it, mix it and get it on iTunes in less than 2 weeks—while the original song (T.I.’s “Whatever You Like”) was still number one on the Billboard chart. In this digital age the public’s attention span seems to be decreasing exponentially, so being of-the-moment is becoming more critical all the time.

I also try to be active in social media, and I enjoy interacting with my fan base and friends on Twitter and Facebook. I think that’s been a great boost to my record and concert ticket sales, as well as a boon to the obsessive people who have chosen to stalk me.

Is your creative process different now than it was five, ten, or twenty years ago? How has technology impacted your creative process?

It’s always hard for me to describe my creative process, but I don’t really think it’s changed all that significantly in the last two or three decades. I just take a lot longer to do things, because I feel more self-imposed pressure with every album I put out. I suppose the main way that technology has impacted my process is as a research tool. Back in the ‘80s when I was writing “I Want a New Duck” and “Living With a Hernia,” I had to go to the West Hollywood branch of the Los Angeles public library and check out books on ducks and hernias… because even with my stupidest songs, I do research. Nowadays, of course, if I wanted a comprehensive list of every kind of hernia in the known universe, that information is just a few keystrokes away. Also, you’ll be happy to hear, I don’t have to wear out the binding in my old rhyming dictionary anymore.

When you're in writing mode... is there a routine? A habit? Do you listen to music, sit in a favorite chair? Is there something you do to get the creative juices flowing?

I tend to write—or at least do what I think is my best writing—in the middle of the night, when most rational people are asleep. Partly this is because there are very few distractions at that time (I’m very easily distracted). It’s also because coming up with ideas is a very internal process, and it’s very difficult to convince your family members that you’re actually hard at work when you’re just sitting somewhere staring off into space. I like having a generous amount of time to write something, but I also function pretty well with pressure and deadlines—I was able to write my recent Lady Gaga parody within a couple days while right in the middle of a fairly grueling Australian concert tour.

Capturing ideas. Surely you've perfected a system. Do you have any favorite apps or tricks you use that a writer or musician out there might find useful?

I don’t know how to actually make the ideas come—I wish I did. I just try to be ready when they do. For the longest time, I kept all my ideas in old-school 3-ring notebooks—with those little plastic dividers and everything. Nowadays, of course, my notebook is of the laptop variety. But the process is the same: I’m an idea pack rat. I keep lists of concepts, titles, random thoughts—anything that might inspire an actual song at some point. And once I’ve come up with an idea that I think merits being developed into a full composition, I will spend weeks (if I have that luxury) writing down every word, phrase and half-baked gag that I can think of, as long as it is somehow related to my chosen concept. Then when I feel I’ve exhausted the potential of my brain, I’ll go through that list and pick out what I think are the best ideas, and then try to come up with rhyming couplets for those ideas, which in turn causes me to come up with different—and sometimes better—ideas. So basically, what works for me is obsessive organization. That just happens to be how I write, not how I live my life.

One other trick that works for me is the unlikely juxtaposition of style and subject matter. I keep a list of musical genres and iconic artists, and another list of subjects that I think would be fun to write about… and then I’ll match up entries between the two columns in a way that seems amusing to me. That’s how I came to write one of the original songs on my new album. I decided I wanted to write a song in the style of The Doors, and I went down my subject list until I came to the word “Craigslist”— and it just struck me as funny to think of Jim Morrison singing about that. It was just so anachronistic… so wrong on so many levels. 

It's easy to write an easy parody, I imagine. But you put so much thought and care into your ideas and word choices, resulting in pure brilliance. You dig beyond the obvious. But how do you know when to stop?

First of all I have to say, the obvious is sometimes okay. I have a knee-jerk reaction to doing obvious jokes, or doing something that everybody in the world is expecting me to do. For that reason I almost didn’t do my Lady Gaga parody because everybody thought I was going to do a Lady Gaga parody. But at the end of the day, it made perfect sense for me to do it, and I’m very happy with the way it turned out—even though it was pretty darn obvious and expected.

As a semi-obsessive artist, it is kind of hard to know when to stop. That’s why I actually kind of welcome deadlines—I enjoy having limits. Otherwise, you never really finish something – you just kind of abandon it. As an artist, you just have to have a sense of when you’re experiencing diminishing returns. At some point, I just can’t justify ignoring my family for another day so I can come up with a better rhyme for “Hasselhoff.”

I’m never afraid of running out of ideas—I always have plenty of them.  The problem is, I have extremely few really good ideas, and those are the only ones that count.

I’ll be heading to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity soon. To get myself ready to walk into the world’s most creative lion’s den, so to speak, I asked a few of my friends if they’d chat with me about the State of Creativity in 2011. Those friends said no, so I asked these people instead.

Next up: Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter.

There’s been some recent discussion about social media making us all a little dumber. I’m not smart enough to know what that means. But I do know there’s a difference between knowing stuff and creating stuff. Is social networking making us more or less creative?

I’ll give the same answer I gave to the Bill Keller (at the time, Executive Editor of the New York Times) tweet, “#Twittermakesusstupid. Discuss.” My response was a paraphrase of the Marshall McLuhan quote: “It is the framework that changes with each new technology, not just the picture in the frame.”

Twitter and other social media make us no less dumb or smart than any other technology or communication platform or service. Twitter allows us all to converse efficiently around the events in our lives and the important thoughts and interests in our lives. These can be deep and meaningful conversations or they can be silly, childish conversations. It’s not the technology that drives us down either path.

I know a lot of wildly creative people who have eagerly embraced Twitter. I have my theories as to why. What are yours?

A few comedians I know have commented that Twitter forces them to be great editors and really keep their material “tight.” They have frequently told me that they will write a tweet that’s longer than 140 characters, and when they get it down to 140 or less, they realize it’s a lot better; that the simpler version is funnier.

Your theories are probably better than mine. It is also probably the case that Twitter makes it easy to be creative in fragments, which is the way in which many creative people work.

I agree that complete freedom within tight constraints appeals to the creative mind. It’s why creatives in ad agencies crave well-crafted creative briefs. Show us the parameters, then give us freedom.

What do you say to those of us in creative fields, like advertising, afraid that an artist’s inspiration or instinct is slowly being replaced by technophiles more enamored with what can be done rather than what should be done?

Art and Technology overlap where Art wants them to overlap, not where Technology wants them to overlap. Artists who have no interest in a technology will avoid it and stick to existing media. Technology for the sake of technology doesn’t find a home.

We’ve seen Twitter play a role in very real revolutions around the globe. Can it revolutionize advertising, too?

It already is. Twitter is shrinking the world, bringing us all closer together. I have said it before that Twitter is to David Blaine as classic marketing is to a classic stage magic show. With Twitter, the consumer is right next to you, with you onstage, conversing with you, part of the story. In classic advertising, the consumer was “out there,” in the audience, where they were expected to watch the trick, when appropriate, and dare not really participate.

I’ll be heading to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity soon. To get myself ready to walk into the world’s most creative lion’s den, so to speak, I asked a few of my friends if they’d chat with me about the State of Creativity in 2011. Those friends said no, so I asked these people instead.

First up: Roger von Oech, creativity expert and author of the seminal how-to book on enhancing personal creativity, “A Whack on the Side of the Head.”

How has the role or importance of creativity in business changed over the past twenty years?

Creativity in business has always been important, but until say 15-20 years ago, top management typically expected it from a narrow segment of the company (R&D, engineering, and parts of marketing and advertising). Today, creativity is encouraged in many more functions that were previously told to do things “by the book” (finance, distribution and fulfillment, inventory management, etc.).

Over the past 25 years or so, more and more responsibility to adapting to change and making improvements has been pushed out from executives to the people doing a specific job. Thus we see companies encouraging many, many small changes. This used to be called “continuous improvement” (or whatever the Japanese equivalent was). Today, it’s called innovation. Creativity has been democratized.

We live in an amazing time where the answer to almost any question is just a few clicks away. Some experts are saying this isn’t necessarily a good thing. We’re not learning as much. Not remembering as much. If an idea is a new combination of existing elements, what happens if our brains aren’t holding as many elements? Will our ideas get smaller?

I agree with your central premise here. In order to be creative, you have to have the basic materials with which to create: facts, information, knowledge, experience, and whatever else you can find. If you don’t have this storehouse of diverse materials, it’s more difficult to make new (and unusual) combinations. Also, if an idea or concept isn’t in your head (as opposed to being at the end of a Google search), it’s very difficult to drag it up into consciousness. I personally am glad that I’ve spent a lifetime trying to acquire knowledge and experiences in a variety of different areas.

I think a good memory is a blessing. I also believe it is a skill that can be practiced and developed. If you get lazy (“let the machines do the work”), it can atrophy. This obviously has negative consequences on one’s creative abilities.

Your Creative Whack Pack card and best-selling iPhone/iPad app force people to view the problem they’re working on from a new perspective. Edward de Bono, who will be speaking at Cannes, calls this a “provocation.” Can’t the random flow of a Twitter stream or Facebook feed serve this very same purpose?

Sure, the random flow of a Twitter stream could do this. But, in reality, is this actually the case? First off, we pick who we follow on Twitter, so there’s going to be some self-selection (and limitation) of the tweets we encounter. Also, I think most people don’t use Twitter for “random provocation,” but rather for a short burst of entertainment and/or procrastination.

Truth be known, if I personally want to get into a creative frame of mind, I get away from social media altogether. I do this so that I can get in touch with my own “inner springs” without the noise of many other voices. This also helps me think in larger terms, i.e., I’m not trying to frame my ideas to fit in 140 character bursts (which can be useful at times, but also quite limiting).

So, which is it? Is technology making our ideas smaller or bigger?

Perhaps a bit of both.

The most amazing thing to happen in my lifetime is that “Moore’s Law” has continued unabated for fifty plus years. This means that ever-improving technology has given many, many, many more people inexpensive and powerful tools to create and express their ideas. Thus, technology has made the creative process significantly more democratic. This is a good thing.

On the other hand, some of the uses to which this technology has been put are tedious and derivative. Also, sometimes technology gives people the illusion that they’re doing creative things without this actually being the fact.

Someone wins a Silver Lion at Cannes this year and desperately wants to win a gold one next year. What’s one thing he or she could do right now to increase their creativity level?

I’d say: “Kiss a favorite belief goodbye.”

Every right idea is eventually the wrong one. Don’t fall in love with ideasâ€"especially the ones that have given you success in the past. There’s something about letting go that opens up new possibilities!

“Who’s my favorite person to follow? There’s a guy named @badbanana.
And I find him to be terribly funny.”
---Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter

As anyone who comes to Cannes will tell you, engaging people requires a good story and humor. So where did we turn? Tim Siedell, aka @badbanana. Tim is leading the storytelling on cannescentrale.com, an MSLGROUP hub for wit, analysis, inside info, exclusive interviews and gossip during the Cannes Festival of Creativity. A bit more about Tim:

• 20-year advertising veteran and award-winning creative director
• Named one of 21 influencers “reshaping media and marketing in 2011” by Ad Age
• Named one of the “World’s Most Influential Tweeters” by TIME magazine
• One of the top ten funniest people on Twitter according to MSNBC, Mashable, Maxim, MSN.com, and Paste Magazine

Joining Tim on the cannescentrale.com platform is an international team of reporters from MSLGROUP whose content is also meant to be interactive. So in true Reddit-style fashion, rate it, comment, LOL, and share it.

And for more info on MSLGROUPâ€"the speciality communications, PR and events network of Publicis Groupe, please click here. (link to www.mslgroup.com)