Stamp

Posted on June 19, 2013 by ballantine70 — Leave a comment ↓

Last night was the first public outing for some of the material I’ve been working on with my “inevitable” side project, Stamp. I ran an hour long webinar for a few kind folk who volunteered to be Guinea pigs exploring some ideas about developing personal digital strategies. If you are interested, you can find the slide deck here.

At the core of Stamp is the belief I hold that whilst the world of tech provides endless new opportunity for us to be able to communicate with each other, the majority of us struggle to make sense of how this impacts us on a day to day level. Every new opportunity offered to communicate leads to more confusion and uncertainty. In all of this change, much in the world known as “social” can end up anything but.

With all of this change, the opportunities for individuals to adopt new, more effective ways to build and nurture their networks are great. There are no perfect ways of working, and new services are constantly coming to market. thinking digital gives a few straightforward tools and techniques for people to take control of their own digital destinies to become more effective in the era of social networks.

The initial feedback from last night’s session seem pretty positive. If you’d like to find out more, do drop me a line.

Posted in General, Marketing, Technology

Crap Tech Industry Metaphors: 1. Breadcrumb Trails

Posted on June 17, 2013 by ballantine70 — Leave a comment ↓

If you read this blog with any regularity, you’ll know I’m a bit of a metaphor junkie: the name itself stems from that love, and I’ve even performed on stage extolling their virtues.

Now with analogy there is always a risk that one will descend into Swiss Toni territory, where using metaphor, analogy and simile becomes a lot like “making love to a beautiful woman”. But then there are occasional metaphors that I come across in the tech industry that are just plain daft; something that just doesn’t work, and yet has become accepted. The trouble with this is that an analogy is a powerful way to explain something to someone who doesn’t know about the concept, but if the metaphor is duff then rather than offering clarity the language used can just further complicate issues.

Last night I was reading some stories to my kids at bedtime. We entered into fairytale territory, and I read Hansel and Gretel to them, a loose and somewhat dumbed-down version of the Brothers Grimm classic. If you don’t know the story, the salient points for now are that two kids (Hansel and Gretel) are twice led into a forest to be abandoned by their father (himself a victim of domestic abuse by his wife, the kids’ stepmother). The first time around Hansel leaves a trail of pebbles as they head out into the forest, and as a result is able to retrace their route back to the family house. The second time around he leaves a trail of breadcrumbs, but on attempting to return, the kids find that the crumbs have been eaten by birds and they stay lost in the depths of the woods as a result. Bad things then happen.

So why, then, has the world of web navigation decided that a “breadcrumb trail” is an appropriate name for the way in which some systems give you a list of the places you have been to enable navigation back to places you’ve come from? (You know the sort of thing – “Home > A pit of despair > Customer Service > Contact us”)

Surely it should be a pebble trail?

Posted in General

Weeknote 151: System Addict

Posted on June 14, 2013 by ballantine70 — Leave a comment ↓

Achievements this week included:

- good catch ups with Roger at Profinda…
- … Mischa at PeerIndex …
- … Michelle at Shhmooze …
- … and an interesting chap called Ian.
- a stack of introductions to and from some of the above and others where serendipity dictated
- running the gauntlet of G8 protesters to catch up with Steve at Hearst
- final tweaking for next week’s experiments
- and a sense of new purpose arrives at last

Next week: personal digital strategies, a chat with a neuroscientist, and a trip to the Peak District

Posted in Weeknotes

The Book Shelf

Posted on June 13, 2013 by ballantine70 — 2 Comments ↓

An old friend of mine yesterday asked me to share a list of the things I’ve been reading recently. Thought I’d share more widely:

50 Economics Ideas You Really Need to Know: your really need to know (50 Ideas)
a bluffer’s guide to economics

Adland: A Global History of Advertising
another self-explanatory title. Useful to understand the culture of the world of ad agency. Blog.

Alex’s Adventures in Numberland
a travelogue through maths written by an author who wrote a brilliant book about Brazilian football a decade ago.

America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940
exactly what IT says on the tin – a sociological history of the phone. Blog.

Decisive: How to make better choices in life and work
not read yet

Digital Vertigo: How Today’s Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us
can’t decide if Keen is a luddite or on to something. Probably a bit of both. He also wrote The Cult of the Amateur, bemoaning how the internet is killing professions like journalism.

Digital Wars: Apple, Google, Microsoft and the Battle for the Internet
Guardian’s tech editor dissects the last 10 years of consumer tech. Blog.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
more brilliance from Mr Pink. Spoiler: it’s not about the money, money, money. Blog.

Economyths: How the Science of Complex Systems is Transforming Economic Thought
not yet read

Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down
written by the founder of a big Indian-based IT service provider. An interesting concept.

Evangelist Marketing: What Apple, Amazon, and Netflix Understand About Their Customers (That Your Company Probably Doesn’t
how to get your customers doing your selling for you.

Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail and Why We Believe them Anyway
how we love to listen to people who predict the future, and why the ones that get the most publicity are the ones who are usually the most wrong. Blog.

Future Minds: How The Digital Age is Changing Our Minds, Why This Matters and What We Can Do About It
not yet read

Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success
Really good. How people who “give forward” succeed (or not)

Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best… and Learn from the Worst
and how to be the former rather than the latter

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters
musings from a chap who’s been there and done that. Strong explanations behind differences between strategies and execution plans. Blog.

Gutenberg the Geek (Kindle Single)
reassessing the invention of print in a contemporary context.

Herd: How to Change Mass Behaviour by Harnessing Our True Nature
perspectives on social and organisational change from a marketing hipster. Blog.

How Will You Measure Your Life?
not yet read

Imagine: How Creativity Works
A great book, unfortunately since withdrawn from sale because Lehrer made up some of the bits about Bob Dylan. Which is ironic given the subject matter. Blog.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
great primer on the psychology of the subject in a very easy to read format. Blog.

Instant MBA: Think, perform and earn like a top business-school graduate (52 Brilliant Ideas)
way less theoretical and reverential than the title might imply

Little Bets: How breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries
how organisations should do lots of little experiments to innovate rather than bet the farm on a few big ones. Flies in the face of the Rocks/Pebbles/Sand model of thinking. Blog.

Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck
more good stuff from the Heath brothers. Blog.

Mastery
not yet read

Office Politics: How to Thrive in a World of Lying, Backstabbing and Dirty Tricks
why sub-clinical psychopaths disproportionately rise to the top of organisations, and how can you protect yourself from them?

Organizations Don’t Tweet, People Do: A Manager’s Guide to the Social Web
the only author on this list I’ve actually met in person. Met? I recently drove him to pick up his car at a garage. Yes, I’m Euan Semple’s cabbie. A great insight, though, into why people (not technology) should be front and centre of any organisation’s social media strategy. Blog.

Puritan Gift, The: Triumph, Collapse and Revival of an American Dream
not yet read

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action
great book: how organisation lose the plot when the lose sense of why they do things. Blog.

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography
the man. The legend. The appalling personal hygiene. Blog.

Sticky Marketing: Why Everything in Marketing Has Changed and What to do About It
start by giving; linked to Give and Take and To Sell is Human. Blog.

Switch: How to change things when change is hard
ideas around change management from the Heath Brothers. Blog.

The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language
words, and how they are connected.

The History of the Telephone
not yet read, but a history of the phone written in 1911.

The Human Element: Ten New Rules to Kickstart Our Failing Organizations
from the man who brought you The Tyranny of Numbers. A bit of public-sector bashing on occasion (it ain’t much better in the private sector…). Blog.

The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?
not yet read

The Inside-Out Revolution: The Only Thing You Need to Know to Change Your Life Forever
Hippy shit, although quite an interesting idea (that our emotions, perception of the outside world, etc is all just our thoughts, so therefore we have complete control over what we feel and how we think).

The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Reinventing the Workplace for the 21st Century
not yet read

The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses
the book that powers a million startups. Blog.

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
learning from the history of previous information and media providers. Blog.

The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive
the man who took on the Turing Test and won.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change
what triggers habitual actions, and how can those cycles be broken/changed. Blog.

The Self Illusion: Why There is No ‘You’ Inside Your Head
not yet read

The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career
part 21st century career planning advice, part LinkedIn user manual. Blog.

Thinking, Fast and Slow
how we have two modes of thinking, and how they lead us down different paths.

To Sell Is Human – Exp: The Surprising Truth about Moving Others
brilliant. In age where buyers generally know more about your products (and your competitors products) than you do, how can a sales person add value? And how can all of us “sell” more effectively (linked to Give and Take to some extent). Blog.

Velocity: The Seven New Laws for a World Gone Digital
not yet read

What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye
I don’t know about art, but I know I find Will Gompertz’s haircut scary

Posted in Bookshelf

The power of personal

Posted on June 13, 2013 by ballantine70 — 1 Comment ↓

Next week I’m running a short webinar about the way in which people can take personal control over their use of digital and social media. It’s testing some content that I’ve been playing around with over the last few months thinking about how to help individuals make sense of their personal and work use of social and digital services.

Given the content matter, I’ve used exclusively social and digital channels to attract attendees. And there have been two general methods used: broadcasting through LinkedIn and Twitter (I’ve around a thousand connections on both services, and probably not that much cross over in between… So let’s estimate a mass audience of around 1,800); and personal invites using Twitter.

I can cope with more people signing up, but at the moment I have a group of half a dozen people. Assuming not too many drop out, that will be a nice number to be able to get a really interactive session.

Here’s the really interesting bit: from all of the’broadcasting’ I’ve attracted 50% of the attendees. But two of those three people are really close contacts (a family friend who I’ve been on holiday with and I’m off on a lads’ weekend walking in the Peaks next weekend, and a former team member from my days at Imagination). And I’ve not only broadcast that message to my own contacts – a few very well connected individuals have also sent out tweets plugging the event to their networks.

Three personal invites, all to people who contacted me after seeing me present on other events and expressed an interest, make up the other 50%. And the number of personal invites rejected? None.

Which kind of shows the value of what I’ll be talking about: that organisations treat social as purely mass broadcast media at their peril, but individuals in organisations need help in building the capabilities and skills needed to become their own personal social media strategists.

If you are interested, the webinar is on at 8pm next Tuesday, London time. You can register for free at
http://stamplondon.eventbrite.com/

Posted in Marketing

Intermediation

Posted on June 12, 2013 by ballantine70 — Leave a comment ↓

It’s often said that the Internet is leading to a disintermediation of services: that the ability for organisations to communicate and transact with their customers online cuts out intermediators (more widely known as middle men). What’s happening in London with taxi firms these days seems to show an opposite effect.

I’ve written in the past about the way in which London minicab firm Addison Lee purportedly increased its business when it started to allow customers to book cabs via a mobile app. I’ve also argued in the past that this first-mover advantage might turn into a liability in the longer term as Software as a Service providers move in to offer aggregated app services to smaller firms giving them an advantage over the bigger company that finds itself running two businesses -a cab firm and a taxi-booking software business.

It looks like at least the SaaS side of that prediction might be coming true as it seems impossible to move around London at the moment without seeing yet another advert for a mobile app offering taxi booking.

So whilst very large firms may be able to cut out middlemen, we are setting massive expansion in new forms of marketplaces with new intermediators, whether in the taxi industry, software (apps marketplaces), financial services (Compare the Market) or just about anything else (think Amazon). And this then possess an interesting dilemma for bigger firms: if there is a big online marketplace for your products or services, is it worth going direct to your customers?

Well, it depends I guess on whether you want to differentiate yourselves from your competition on something other than price. But that then in turn comes at a cost- not only of building your own channels in competition when marketplaces operating at scale, but also in terms of the marketing effort that will need to be invested to build your direct-to-customer service brand.

Posted in Marketing, Technology

Single points of failure

Posted on June 11, 2013 by ballantine70 — Leave a comment ↓

I had two meetings scheduled yesterday where the people I was expecting to meet found themselves without their mobile phones.

One was lost, the other had turned into an iBrick. Both cases had fairly catastrophic impact on their owners’ days. As we become increasingly reliant on smart devices, the impact of their failure becomes heightened, especially if there is little or no contingency in place.

In traditional IT management terms, there are two key factors in play here: avoiding single points of failure, and avoiding reliance on a single provider (particularly if that provider is delivering very different types of service).

Most people these days seem to implicitly get this when it comes to personal email. It’s comparatively rare to find folk using an ISP’s email address these days: the challenge of having to change you email address when switching internet service provider is a pain that many have gone through (although the crappy service that most of them offered at the time that Hotmail, Yahoo! and then Gmail provided something much better undoubtedly helped too).

Getting lots of services from the same provider has undoubted benefits if those services are well integrated. Where those services aren’t as well integrated and bundled more for convenience than functional purpose (say, for example, your mobile phone number, texting and calling, your internet connection when on the move, and your supply and maintenance of hardware, which in essence is the average pay-monthly mobile deal) there is a question to be asked about the risks one is running.

As we enter a more multi-device world, a procurement question we should be asking ourselves is whether the cheaper cost of a second SIM card from our existing telco for a tablet (for example) would be better offset by the reduced risk of having two suppliers. Oh, and keeping a spare phone handy wouldn’t go amiss, either.

Herein lie some of the challenges we all face as we enter a multi-device world…

Posted in Technology

Stamp

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Crap Tech Industry Metaphors: 1. Breadcrumb Trails

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Weeknote 151: System Addict

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The Book Shelf

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The power of personal

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Intermediation

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Single points of failure

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