Not for the first time, yesterday I spent some time with a potential client who had been through the digital agency selling process and had, quite frankly, been sold a Digital Pup. Digital lipstick on a pig, if you excuse my mixing of metaphors. Because these days the world of digital agencies has become one … Continue reading The Digital Pup
This week I have learned: - to always be wary when planning for complexity starts to become trying to map out chaos - my starting point is usually "who do I know who would know how to do this?"... - ...and often the answer will be in a book. - I do really wish that … Continue reading Weeknote 358: productive
We've got a friend staying with us for a couple of nights. In my concern to make sure that she got to the station at the right time this morning, my usual routine (such as I have one) was broken, and I left home this morning with my Samsung Galaxy perched on our kitchen worktop. … Continue reading No phone day
So it’s just about a decade now since I had my Damascene moment on Cloud computing. Whilst working at the then Reuters, one of the four main business units came to IT to tell us that not only had they purchased SalesForce, but that they also had the people to be able to implement it. … Continue reading Ten years a cloud
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
Things I have learned this week: As I start Stamp's European expansion, I do wonder at how easy it is currently to do business and sell my services to a client on continental Europe, and how unbelievably fucking miserable it's going to get if we go ahead with a project that, as I saw recently … Continue reading Weeknote 357: Exporting
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
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