I spent yesterday afternoon at a fascinating event hosted by software development company Softwire, exploring issues of attracting and retaining young technology talent. Panelists Bill Thompson from the BBC, Softwire's CEO Zoe Cunningham and employer brand specialist Daria Taylor explored a number of themes. But by the end of the session I think I've concluded … Continue reading How do you solve a problem like millennials?
Category: General
I had an exciting conversation yesterday with Claire Burge, someone with whom hopefully I might get the opportunity to work in the near future. At the core of her business thinking is the concept of No Email. It's a wonderfully simple encapsulation of a whole stack of thoughts that she has (many of which I share) … Continue reading A bunch of cargo cults
It appears that many membership organisations are facing an existential crisis. In the past two decades the means by which we can establish and sustain networks has changed dramatically, first through tool like email and latterly through the emergence of social networks. In an era when the cost to communicate with a group of people … Continue reading Membership
Ask people if they want something new, something different, something better, and they'll probably say "yes". Get people to change their behaviours to use the new, different, better thing you've just built for them and it's a different story. It's hard. They don't change. At a basic economic level I guess you can explain this … Continue reading The change paradox
In the year and a half in which I have been building my business, I've had many great plans that have resulted in nothing (or, at least, nothing yet). In the same period my most successful and profitable client relationships have emerged seemingly by chance. A random referral, an email out of the blue, a … Continue reading Engineering serendipity
In the research that I recently published for IG Digital into the ways in which organisations are using digital channels to engage with customers, email came out on top. Of the 65 organisations I spoke to, just about every one had established processes for the ways in which they handled email communications from customers. Which … Continue reading No reply
The legend of New Coke goes a little something like this... Thirty-odd years ago Coca Cola got a little bit spooked by the marketing campaign run by their arch competitors Pepsi - the Pepsi Taste Challenge. The campaign, which ran in adverts over here too, showed blind taste tests where people time after time selected … Continue reading The New Coke moment
Responsive Design is a big thing at the moment. If a website has been made to be responsive, it means that it adapts itself to display reasonably sensibly on any screen size (within reason). There are two alternatives to responsive design - do nothing, so that the website appears just as it would on a … Continue reading Going mobile: Day 4: Responsive design
Yesterday, for the second year running, I was lucky to be able to attend the annual CBI Conference at the Grosvenor House Hotel as a guest of Harvey Nash. It's a curious affair, a million miles away from the sorts of events I more usually attend these days, but gives me my annual excuse to … Continue reading CBI Conference 2012
For many years, IT has been talking about "the business"; how we need to understand "the business", to achieve alignment with "the business", to be able to speak the language of "the business". In conversation yesterday I had another one of those lightbulb moments: we've been speaking about "the business" as some homogenised whole when, … Continue reading “the business”
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