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Time for a technology de-tox?
February 11th, 2010
I made the cardinal sin today. A friend and I met for coffee and were having a great conversation. After a while I waited for him to get distracted and look briefly away. Probably only a few seconds – but enough time for me to scroll rapidly through the new messages on my phone. When I looked back up, his face said it all. You sad sod – you can’t even share a cup of coffee without checking your messages. Rachel Cohn knows all about this pattern of behaviour and reminds us to take a step back and NOT be permanently wired, or wirelessly, connected.
The Tenby Boxing Day Swim!
December 30th, 2009
Thank you very much for helping me to raise over £160 for H.O.P.E. on my Boxing Day Swim. By 10.30 several hundred of us had gathered on Tenby’s North Beach. I lost count of the number of Father Christmasses, Vikings, Planet Earths, Vicars, Cricketers and Christmas fairies getting ready for the swim. Looking for someone to start a conversation with (there can’t be anything more embarrassing than standing around in swimming shorts being stared at by thousands of extremely well-clad onlookers), l met a very jolly, rotund Father and Mother Christmas. Together they resembled a pair of gigantic knitted red peppers. ‘Well boyo, I said to the wife I wouldn’t make the mistake I made last year, so today I’m wearing sandals, two pairs of woollen socks, thermal long johns, a vest, over-trousers, a shirt and sweater underneath my fleece Father Christmas suit’. I felt a pang of anxiety. Was I rather under-insulated for the occasion? There was no time to panic – a shout came over the tannoy and the three of us joined in the mad headlong rush to the sea.
A vicar tripped over his vestments, several Father Christmases collided with one another and a small fairy fell over in the surf. The Vikings whimpered, a bearded nurse mislaid a breast and the swimmer dressed as a cardboard Christmas tree lost several baubles as his branches sagged with seawater. It was bedlam in the finest Welsh tradition. A group of us swam out a little further and when I stopped and looked back, I realised two things; I was out of my depth and it was, unsurprisingly, eye-wateringly, teeth-clenchingly cold. However, it was worth it just for the view. The whole of Tenby seemed to have turned out to cheer the swimmers on. Every balcony, balustrade, pavement, road, garden and windowsill was filled with onlookers. Between us a huge beach bonfire sparked and roared like something from the set of the Wicker Man. I swam back and walked up the beach looking like a slightly undercooked lobster. Someone thrust a cup of steaming vegetable soup into my hand (thank you Tenby Lions!) and I felt that fantastic endorphin rush as the body’s thermostat puts its foot on the gas and says ‘that really is quite enough madness for today Kevin, thank you very much’. A big thank you to Tyna and Rhiannon for being there too.
The Motivational Man with the Deep Pan
December 10th, 2009
Brad Burton rang up the other day. ‘Kevin, I urgently need a three-minute video to promote myself as a motivational speaker. Can you get to Doncaster race course next Wednesday?’ When I first filmed Brad a few years ago I noted that while he was built like a gorilla, he had the rather squeaky high-pitched voice of a girl guide and we might have to do some work in post-production to bring it down an octave or two.
Brad has employed a voice coach and personal trainer and the man we filmed last week was a completely different gorilla. He practically charged onto the seminar stage, clutching his beloved pizza box, and held the audience of Yorkshire business folk (not the easiest to warm-up) in the palm of his hand.
There is an authority and confidence that booms out of him now, mixed with some incredibly honest stories about his own personal growth and development. His stroke of genius, that has taken him from box room to a boardroom in less than two years, was to recognise every business needs two things: people and appointments. Using his innate marketing talents and creative imagination he set up a new Business Breakfast Network. Everyone thought he was mad. There were breakfast groups everywhere. But Brad held onto his dream and designed a format that simply blew away the cobwebs of traditional style network breakfast meetings. If this Somerset success story doesn’t inspire and motivate you to develop your business and expand your contacts, then nothing will!
A big thank you to Peter ‘X-factor’ Dickson for his fantastic introductory voice-over, and Barry Mellor for his excellent photography on the day.
‘In a world where’……….celebrating the magical voice of DonLaFontaine
December 4th, 2009
His voice reverberated through multiplexes the world over. Godfathers, terminators and apocalyptic futures have all been introduced by the deep dark chocolatey tones of Don ‘In a world where…..’ LaFontaine. In a culture frantically texting, twittering, emailing and blogging, we forget just how powerful the gift of speech can be. Sit back and listen to the master whose voice launched a thousand blockbusters. And if public speaking is your thing and you’d like to improve your skills, here are some great tips from Toastmasters
The Tesco’s of Cyberspace
December 3rd, 2009
Engraved on the doors of the Amazon warehouse entrance is Jeff Bezos’s motivational phrase to all his employees ‘Work hard, have fun, make history‘. Just below this notice (and written in invisible ink), is the following addendum ‘and thanks for making me a multi-billionaire in the process‘. The growth of Amazon has been truly phenomenal. From a two-bedroom house in Seattle in 1994, with extension leads running into the garage to power the servers, to a global business now serving 45 million customers.
When I’ve run e-commerce seminars, one of the questions I regularly ask delegates is ‘What do you think is the secret of Amazon’s success?’ Almost everyone says – ‘ the low prices’ or ‘the range of stock they carry’. I then bring up the quote from Jeff Bezos himself, which underpins the Amazon philosophy – ‘Amazon.com is obsessively focussed on great customer service‘. It is a sentence that should be enshrined in the heart of every e-commerce entrepreneur.
It is hard to believe that when Amazon started receiving its first online orders, the programmers coded a small electronic beep to sound in the office every time an order arrived. Every beep was greeted with a loud cheer in the Amazon office. It wasn’t long before they had to switch it off. Permanently.
What our windscreen wipers say about us
December 2nd, 2009
Jacques Tati, that genius of observational comedy, excels in directing this short clip (from his 1971 masterpiece Trafic) about the relationship between the personality of the driver and the activity of their windscreen wipers. The roots of the best comedy are in observation.
Metamorphosis played by Branka Parlic
December 1st, 2009
Every so often I come across a concert performance that gives me goosebumps. Branka Parlić is one of the most prominent interpreters of contemporary classical music in Eastern Europe. Here she takes on the cycle of Philip Glass’ Metamorphosis, which is considered one of the most challenging tasks in the sphere of contemporary minimalism, and plays with a vigour and intensity that is simply stunning. Recorded with breathtaking clarity at the Synagogue in Novi Sad, Serbia.
The self-effacing inventor of the world wide revolution
November 28th, 2009
Watch Tim Berners-Lee Interview in Educational & How-To | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
What would the web look like today if Bill Gates or Rupert Murdoch had poured their resources into creating the html and http protocols and built the first web browser? Would their thirst for monetising everything they touched, have meant that the web became another commercial channel? How would we feel if we made a micro-payment to the great god Sky or Microsoft every time we went online? Instead we should treasure Tim Berners-Lee. He could have been wealthier than Croesus, but chose not to make a penny from his invention. He made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. His unselfishness and philanthropy makes Rupert Murdoch seem very small indeed.
2 degrees of separation department. One of my Quaker friends, Joy Williamson, used to work at Ferranti computers in the 1950s. I talked to her about the web after Meeting one day. ‘Oh yes’, she replied casually ‘We knew Conway and Kate Berners-Lee very well. Tim was a delightful baby. I used to bounce him up and down on my knee.’ I almost dropped my coffee cup. I cannot imagine a Knight of the Realm and holder of the Order of Merit being bounced up and down on anyone’s knee today.
Plastic Flappy Things – A tale of two retail stores
November 27th, 2009
I’ve just been to B&Q to buy some replacement blades for a modelling knife. Unable to find any, I ended up having to purchase a new ‘Craft Knife’ pack encapsulated in a teeth grindingly tough plastic blister pack. It contained three different knife handles (none of which I needed) and 12 blades (11 of which I didn’t need). I mentioned this waste to the cashier and he immediately tannoyed for any available member of staff. Two rapidly appeared and took me back down the aisle. ‘Well’ they said, searching through the blades section, ‘We don’t appear to have any’ (pointing to an empty display peg) ‘but I am sure that we used to stock them’. It reminded me of the great Jack Dee sketch.
In contrast, we had to purchase a couple of new suitcases recently. An online search found that the best offer was at John Lewis ‘Never knowingly undersold’ (well, most of the time). We drove over to the vast temple of consumerism that is Cribbs Causeway and dutifully trotted through to the suitcase department. Although the website said stock was available, the special offer was nowhere to be seen. Feeling slightly frustrated we asked for help and a bright young woman, with an impressive ‘Head of Suitcases’ badge, immediately appeared. ‘But we saw it online and your website said there was stock available and we have just driven thirty-five miles’ we whined rather pitifully. ‘Don’t worry‘ she replied cheerfully, ‘John Lewis is a multi-channel retailer now‘ and took us over to a computer, brought up their website, checked warehouse stock levels in the warehouse and said ‘We can have them delivered to your home on Tuesday for no extra charge, at the same price as you saw on our website‘.
John Lewis were late to the world of e-commerce and launched their website in 2001. The company’s aim was to eventually generate £100m in online sales. Last year the John Lewis online store turned over £327m, outstripping even their most successful department store and it is growing at about 30% a year. No wonder their staff proudly talk about John Lewis being a multi-channel retailer.
Twitter explained in exactly 2 minutes and 25 seconds
November 21st, 2009
I am a huge fan of Lee and Sacha leFever’s work at Commoncraft. Why use lots of talking heads when you can explain technology with a cracking script and some very simple and clear 2-D animation? They have perfected the use of the sound bite sized video as a powerful educational tool. And I dedicate this film of theirs to the worried couple who approached me after a seminar last year and said ‘We’d love to have a website just like you’ve described, but we’ve been told that the Internet is already full and we’re afraid we have left it too late’.