I spent a very pleasant Sunday with friends, one of whom runs a school for the performing arts in London. Whilst these days he doesn't teach as much as he used to (or, to some extent as much as he would like), his eyes would come alight when talking about how his role was to … Continue reading Unleashing potential
Category: Themes
Every so often a small yet simple idea from someone else gets lodged in my brain and changes the way I think about things. So it is with the concept from Sigmund Freud that crossed my path a few months ago: the narcissism of small differences. What Freud observed was that when groups of people … Continue reading Small differences
This week I have learned: the power of pictures, even scrappy, hand drawn pictures, in communicating a message that my business is expanding into Europe. Time to get the Irish passport... that my best sales tool is probably an ability to stand up and tell a half-funny story that Twitter Blankety Blank is awesome. Next … Continue reading Weeknote 356: raining clients
A few years ago I read somewhere (source long since forgotten) of a definition of a game being a series of barriers that players decide voluntarily to overcome. At the time it struck me that that pretty much described much of the business of working, too. Although the volunteer nature of the pursuit may be … Continue reading Self-imposed barriers
Every year to accompany the Silicon Beach event, those speaking are asked to contribute to a book that is distributed to all attendees. Here's my contribution... A good friend of mine and I enjoy a heated debate. She’s an accountant with opinions. I’m a gob-shite. We both like a glass or two of red with … Continue reading Blindly Following Rules
Having recently learned to draw a cartoon chicken* following the wonderful tutorial from @SimonHeath1, and now fully in flow with the iPad/Pencil program, a new diversion: Heath Chickenson. Episode 1: *Simon's instructions are technically for a pigeon. Don't let that distract you.
Back in the early 1980s my then senior school, Bushey Hall, was faced with closure. The local education authority had proposed that the place should be shut, merged into another school a mile or so up the road. Parents and pupils fought the proposal. We organised. We created a petition, and got many thousands of … Continue reading Appocracy
Imagine a scenario... You are busy doing whatever it is that earns you your living. Your phone rings. It's from someone who might need something so important that you need to interrupt your current activity. But it might be trivial enough that you don't. You answer the phone. It's trivial. You haven't got the time … Continue reading The place of work
The theme of facial recognition appears to be in the news at the moment. Not only, though, from the introduction of Apple’s latest thousand pound fondle slab, but from news about a research project that has been using machine learning techniques reportedly to identify sexuality. Now first of all there is a lot of media … Continue reading All in the eyes
One of the things I noted early on about my use of paper notepads was how it often serves the role of a mobile flip chart. I draw (not particularly well) to help explain or explore ideas with others. One of my big bugbears with using web conferencing services like Hangouts is the loss of … Continue reading The no-notebook experiment: day 5
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