Jan 15, 2013 | Personal Rant, Social Media
The institutional response to what they do not understand is usually to ban it, and prosecute, just in case. The US Attorney has some form in this regard, as do the US legislators, they respond without adequate regard to the whole picture.
The suicide of Aaron Swartz is a sad example of this disregard, and the post below makes the point. It is another sad lesson that what you do not understand is not necessarily dangerous, so spend the time to understand before you condemn.
The Truth about Aaron Swartz’s “Crime”.
As I said yesterday, Vale Aaron.
Clay Shirky on Jan 30 posted this thoughtful piece that should be required reading.
PS. July 18 2014.
There has been a movie made of Aaron Swartz’s life, a chronicle of an amazing, and way too short life. This is a link to the movie, and my thanks to Mitch Joel for providing the information in his blog that led me to this PS.
Dec 20, 2012 | Marketing, Personal Rant, Small business
Yesterday in the midst of a sizeable gathering, one person was moaning about the rip-off represented by Christmas hampers, specifically one she had received the previous day. “Full of stuff I could have bought and probably cost half as much, what a wank”
Unfortunately for the moaner, the business that had given her said hamper was a client of mine, so I was aware of the thought, time, degree of personalisation, and genuine care that went into the construction of the hampers as a means of acknowledging the value they placed in the relationship. They did not have to give hampers, they wanted to. Whilst the costs incurred were important, the real importance to my client was elsewhere, a point entirely missed by the moaner.
It seems my client wasted the money they spent on that particular hamper, misjudging the total lack of grace of the receiver, but hopefully she was one of a very few who failed to recognise the intent.
I can say for sure that the mistake will not be made again with that particular person.
Merry Christmas to all my readers, I cannot send you all a hamper, but I can send you my genuine thanks for coming, commenting, and generally participating in making the writing of this blog a joy rather than a labour.
Merry Christmas.
Allen
Oct 26, 2012 | Communication, Marketing, Personal Rant, Social Media
Millions of “writers” are now publishing blogs, and as a result there are many sources of “how to” write a better blog, and get it seen.
However, it seems to me that most of the advice is rehashing pretty basic stuff, and focusses way too much attention on the medium of publishing, the web, rather than offering advice on the writing. If there is any merit in the idea that a well written blog will outperform a poorly written one, perhaps we should ignore most of the new-age advice, and go to the experts on writing.
Having an ability to write, to express an idea memorably, with clarity, and in a manner that creates understanding and an action from the reader is not a result of the net, it is just as hard as it always was, it is just that now the good stuff has far more visible competition for attention from the crap.
David Ogilvy is an acknowledged expert, the original Mad-man, who wrote some of the best advertising of all time, also wrote this internal memo advising his employees how to write.
The advice holds for those trying to write blogs, tweets, and advertising copy today, as much as it did of O&M employees in 1982.
Oct 17, 2012 | Branding, Marketing, Personal Rant
This is a situation where a modest intellect has learned the language, and so can spew out a bunch of marginally related clichés. They understand some of the obvious stuff, can look at the numbers, and have a superficial understanding of customer behavior, and the context in which that behavior occurs, so they can babble about brands, marketing, and communication sufficiently well to fool some of the people, at least some of the time.
Real marketing is done by a very few very smart people who get to the deeper reaches of motivation and behavior, who are able to scrape off the over-burden of verbiage, and get to the real guts of the strategic and communication challenges being faced.
Marketing is inhabited by a group that is pretty ordinary, just look at the UAI’s required to get into the various marketing courses around the place. The smart people are doing something else. Is it any wonder that there is a real lack of good strategy and marketing intellect at the top of organisations, the people at the top who make the succession decisions see the lack of depth in the marketing “profession” and act accordingly.
This rant was motivated by a bloke I was pitching to in a sufficiently senior role to say “No”, who not only failed to grasp the basics of the argument I was putting, which could have been put down to a lack of communication skill on my part, but he also asked a number of questions that demonstrated he knew nothing, and to top it off, talked about himself a lot.
Save us from the idiots making decisions with nothing more than dartboard tools.
Oct 3, 2012 | Change, Personal Rant
Talking about “the cloud” is common around the BBQ’s I go to, (pass another beer please, the sausages need turning). However, it seems few of my verbal combatants have any idea that the cloud, is, somehow, in fact, an industrial development somewhere, creating buildings, employing people, consuming huge amounts of power, and cutting down trees in the process.
Listening to the mumbling of Tasmanian politicians this week, conflicted by the implosion of Gunns, and its implications for the Tasmanian economy, and their entrapment by green politics has been instructive in the ways of political fluffing. How can you offer an environment that encourages the enterprise from which the tax revenue to provide voter demanded services is generated, whilst not allowing those very enterprises to actually do anything?
Building a “cloud” would seem the perfect answer. No tree will ever be in danger from an axe, or even someone looking at it from the vantage point of a car, and Clouds must be good, because not only are the pretty, almost everyone seems to want one now.
Experience elsewhere indicates that all is not green in the cloud, that the industrial nature of the cloud eventually emerges, as it has here in the Tasmanian like haven of Quincy, in Washington state. When Microsoft came to town with a cloud, a chunk of money, and some commercial expectations, some realised that the world had changed.
Seems like an opportunity for Tasmania?
Sep 3, 2012 | Leadership, Personal Rant, Small business
I observe lots of activity in all sorts of enterprises, public and private, see KPI’s set and met, initiatives announced with fanfare (and in the case of the NSW Government re-announced)but little of any value seems to be happening.
Familiar?
Enter the Rocking Horse syndrome.
Lots of activity, failure to make any useful progress, but sometimes it keep the kids happy, for a while anyway.
There has been a movie made of Aaron Swartz’s life, a chronicle of an amazing, and way too short life. This is a link to the movie, and my thanks to Mitch Joel for providing the information in his blog that led me to this PS.