Lessons learned from being a chair
Last week I chaired my first ever conference. I was a bit nervous because my experiences of conferences as an attendee have generally been pretty disappointing, and I’m not really the kind of person who relishes standing up and speaking in front of a room full of people.
But despite the reservations I think the day went pretty well (although I haven’t had my delegate feedback back yet) and I came away from it having learned about a few things that I thought I’d put up here.
(I also came away with the feeling that we really need to look at the basic format and structure of business conferences, but that’s something for a different post.)
Those lessons are:
1. Don’t be the conference whore.
2. Be there all day.
3. Pretend to be a chair.
More details on what exactly they mean after the jump. Read more
Boris Johnson: Fit for purpose?
I don’t like to talk about politics too much on this blog, but as we get nearer to the London Mayoral elections it’s become harder and harder to ignore things like the Evening Standard’s blatant pro-Boris propagandism and the way in which Johnson seems to be winning over members of the press and public with his well-practiced buffoonery.
This became really apparent to me the other week when a couple of journalist friends of mine attended the Mayoral debate at City Hall and came away evangelising about Johnson; raving about “how funny he was”, and how he had “the audience in stitches”.
You could write whole books about the increasing role the ‘cult of personality’ has to play in modern politics, but I’d argue that what we’re seeing from Boris Johnson isn’t a personality at all. A personality has many different facets; in fact by its very definition a personality is a collection of inherent qualities.
And last time I looked Court Jester was a job not a personality.
Just to hammer the point home, watch this video of Ken Livingstone make a speech shortly after the July 7 bombings, or read the full statement he gave on the day of the bombings here (which I wish I could find video of because it is extraordinary).
Do that and then try to imagine Boris Johnson in place of Livingstone. Difficult isn’t it?
I’m not saying ‘Vote Ken’, I’m just trying to point out that wayward hair and a good line in self-deprecating wit is maybe not the greatest basis on which to elect a city leader.
How Tim Ferriss blogs
I’m not going to preface this interview with a long description of who Tim Ferriss is.
If you haven’t already heard of Tim or his book The 4-Hour Work Week then you should go visit his website and you’ll get an idea of what he does.
I wanted to interview Tim because I think his blog is outstanding. After buying and reading the US edition of his book last year I subscribed to his RSS feed and was immediately impressed by the quality and consistency of the stuff he was putting out and how practical and engaging the content was.
Tim was over in the UK recently to promote the book so I managed to schedule a quick phone interview with him to ask him about his approach to writing on the web and communicating with his readership.
Your blog didn’t exist before the book came out, is that right?
Yes, there was no blog before the book. I always saw the blog and book as synergistic, but I thought the blog would eventually eclipse the book, because the blog allows the concepts in the book to expand and evolve as well as allowing you to create these one-on-one relationships with the people who are doing the experiments.
So the blog was never just going to be a marketing tool for the book?
No, just creating a blog to promote a product is a bad idea. A blog takes real investment, and the content can’t be compelling if it’s just a marketing tool.
Creating good content that gets syndicated is far more effective than SEO and pitching.
Read more
A quick chat with Lloyd Davis of the Tuttle Club
A few weeks ago I noticed (mainly through his Twitter stream) that my friend, blogger, writer and, erm, “international social media playboy” Mike ‘Sizemore’ Atherton was spending an awful lot of time in the Coach and Horses pub in Soho. Now I know Mike likes the odd drink and can get through a bottle of whiskey faster than you can say ‘Jimmy McNulty’ but these Tweets were coming through at 10 in the morning! Either Mike had a problem or something else was going on.
I soon found out that the ’something else’ was the Social Media Cafe, a very informal gathering of ‘media folk of the social kind’ which took place in the room above the pub each Friday morning; organised by social media guru, blogger and busker Lloyd Davis.
After a couple of Friday mornings spent downing coffee and croissants and meeting a truck load of new, interesting people Qype became the first sponsor of the Social Media Club and I’m now happy to say that Lloyd has a queue of people signing up to support what I think is a fantastic project.
After last week’s SMC I took five minutes to sit down with Lloyd and ask him what the Social Media Cafe (and it’s ‘parent organisation’ The Tuttle Club) is all about, and to get his views on social media in general.
N.B. The audio on this video goes slightly out of sync near the end, I’m blaming iMovie for that one.
The Best SXSW coverage is not online…
…It’s in the Moleskine of designer Mike Rohde:
Seriously, Mike’s conference notes are a thing of beauty. As someone who has handwriting that looks like something a drunk chimp sat on a washing machine might produce, I can only dream of being able to capture my (and other people’s) thoughts in such a lovely way.
So even if you thought you’d had enough of SXSWi for 2008, take a peek inside Mike’s notebook over on his Flickr stream. I guarantee you’ll be inspired.
Lifts of Doom
The new Qype office in Hamburg has one killer feature: these incredible and potentially lethal open lifts, known as paternoster.
I’ll let Wikipedia explain:
“A passenger elevator which consists of a chain of open compartments (each usually designed for two persons) that move slowly in a loop up and down inside a building without stopping. Passengers can step on or off at any floor they like…the name paternoster (”Our Father”, the first two words of the Lord’s Prayer in Latin) originally applied to the device because the elevator is in the form of a loop and is thus similar to rosary beads used as an aid in reciting the Lord’s prayer.”
So there you go - named after a prayer and quite rare thanks to the high rate of accidents… oh and one featured in the film The Omen.
Mixa Tapes: nice product, even better customer care
At the end of last year I bought a Mixa Tape as a present for a work colleague.
These ‘USB cassettes’ are, fundamentally, nothing more than an old C90 case wrapped around a memory stick, but the genius is that you can design the case yourself using the website.
A lot like the Moo cards operation, Mixa make it really easy to upload images and shift them around so you can completely personalise your tape, and then a few days later you get this great little package through your letterbox that contains your tape plus some nice stickers and a USB cable thrown in.
Plus, you don’t have to load up your tape with MP3s, you can add videos, documents, pictures…whatever. If was in a band I know what I’d be using for my next demo tape.
As you’ll see from my photos below, the glue which held my case together wasn’t the greatest and was beginning to come loose (I had to fix it with some UHU before I gave it away). After I posted these pictures to Mixa’s Flickr pool they emailed me to apologise and tell me they’d fixed the glue problem, and gave me a discount code for a free tape.
Now that’s community management.
Created with Admarket’s Slideshow creator
Paying a visit to St Pancras International
I got up bright and early this morning to take a trip down to the newly refurbished, £800 million St Pancras International to shoot some video for Qype.
Have to say, I was really impressed with the whole thing, especially Paul Day’s statue The Meeting Place, which goes straight into my ‘Top 5 Statues in London’ list (dont ask me to name the other four).
Anyway, I’ll let the photos do the talking:
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.2007
Colour coordinated bookshelves
This is what happens if you send me on ‘gardening leave’.
I know, it’s not exactly an original idea, but we were installing some new shelves in our spare room anyway, so I took the opportunity to get a bit anal and organise them all by colour, and I think it turned out really well.
And here’s the inevitable time lapse video (courtesy of the brilliant Gawker app) of me struggling to make the bloody shelves (thanks Ikea) and organising some of the books:
Asembling and stocking the new bookshelves in 30 seconds from Hinchcliffe on Vimeo.