Monthly Archives: November 2009

Sucker For A Story. A Bigger Sucker For A Mystery

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Free MeThis image enthrals me. Why? Because it doesn’t just tell a story. It also doesn’t tell the story: are these two people talking, or have they just met? What are they meeting for? What is that moon-like thing? What does this image mean and stand for? By mentally filling in the gaps, I look at this longer than I would at an image that told the whole story.

I’m sucker for a story. I’m the type of guy who watches the trailer, and wants to watch the film just to find out what happens. Hence I often save myself money by jumping on Wikipedia. I just have to find out what happens, to the point that I almost don’t care about the acting and special effects.

But I’m a bigger sucker for a mystery – and I think that really, that’s just what a good story is full of – continual mysteries, twists and nuances that when you discover and work out what they are, provide an incredible sense of satisfaction. No wonder that Lost is so engaging – it’s so full of mysteries that you just have to know the answers too – and it keeps you hooked week in, week out. Continue reading →

If You Fail To Prepare, You Prepare To Fail

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Breakfast at Carluccio's

Since getting back from our time away over August, I haven’t stopped. I wrote a blog post about being relaxed, refreshed and re-envisioned when I got back from the holiday, but boy does it seem like a distant memory! The good thing is that I delivered on what I said I’d would.

I have, however, learnt a valuable lesson over the last 3 months (I seriously can’t believe how quickly the time has gone) – a lesson not learned through success, but through burnout: if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail. Continue reading →

The Desperate Need For Clarity

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Expo2008: Squared & DiagonalOver the last weeks I have attended a number of events/conferences in London, most recently including Jeff Pulver‘s #140Conf, where I got to dine with Jeff the night before with Daren Foysth and few other new friends. The next day, despite the lineup of experienced and innovating speakers, and the crowd of great people, I was mostly disappointed by the content that these speakers shared: there was nothing in it that had any kind of structure that I could take away and use – and it’s been the same at the other conferences too.

Note that these conferences were attended by existing Social Media practitioners – they weren’t entry level. This is important to point out, because some people made the same criticisms about Like Minds. My retort is that Like Minds was aimed at a wide range of skill sets, and had four keynotes to provide value to the range of expertise in the room. Having said that, we’re still working hard at making sure in February we deliver unquestionable value – a conversation you can follow some of over in the comments section at this post on Carl Haggerty’s blog. Continue reading →

Immerse Yourself

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Last night we announced at Like Minds the next step from October’s event, and the next step towards February’s event: Like Minds Immersive. The idea of Like Minds Immersive is “executive training in developing, integrating, managing and measuring new thinking, born out of a need to narrow from the big ideas shared at Like Minds” – in other words, taking innovation concepts, presenting the fundamental precepts, and then drilling down into actionable advice. Continue reading →

10 Insights Into Guidance, As Opposed To Governance

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Yesterday I attended #1pound40, courtesy of Thomson Reuters and Amplified. Naturally, it was very informative, lots of fun, introduced me to some wonderful thinkers, and gave me an opportunity to see people from the London Twitter scene that I’ve been getting to know better. And, of course, there was some great discussion that really got me thinking, which is what I want to talk about today.

Continue reading →

Moving Forward Part 1: Creating Permission

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Moving Forward

I’m going to address over the coming weeks some of the stages of Social Media and P2P program development in order to provide a structure and direction for really three sets of people;

  1. First, practitioners of Social Media and the even more exciting P2P (people-to-people) organisational model who can use this content in their dealings with their clients,
  2. Secondly, for CEOs, MDs, and other c-suiters who are already doing some degree of Social Business, but want more structure,
  3. And thirdly, for those mid-level employes in larger organisations who desperately want the organisation to start using Social Media.

Continue reading →

Making The First Move

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chessI recently captured some thoughts from a discussion I’d had with Benjamin Ellis, a very astute consultant based in London, on the subject of business mindset and innovation. One of the things we discussed was what is known as first mover advantage – the term given to those businesses that make the first move into new innovative technologies ahead of their competitors. Continue reading →

Tactics Aren’t Strategy AKA Just Because You Could Doesn’t Mean You Should

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One of Olivier and I from earlier.

Yesterday I was with a prospective client that my company would provide Social Media consulting and management for. What I kept repeating to them every time they asked questions such as “What’s an RT?”, “What’s LinkedIn?” and “Should we do a podcast?”, was that we shouldn’t get caught up in the tools and tactics – we needed to talk strategy. Continue reading →

Influencers And Translators

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZUJ7D5zjxg&fmt=18

Yesterday over brunch John Harvey (Exeter City Centre Manager) was telling me about the above mentioned case of Twitter, and the offline momentum he gained from a single tweet. It’s a great (and digitool, not digitall) example of what I think is the greatest use of Social Media for business: engaging and envisioning influencers. Continue reading →