My company is planning regular ‘work for free days’ throughout the spring and summer. Working for free is a sticky one. Why would you do anything that wasn’t going to make you money? For one thing, we’re in a recession. But just because money is tight doesn’t mean we shouldn’t explore the opportunities to get our name, and our work, out there that won’t come any other way.
Anyone who knows me will know I’m a bit of a gadgetphobe. I dislike getting new bits of kit because it’s something new to learn how to use, it’s probably not as good as the thing it’s replacing (or worse, it’s not replacing anything in particular) and, let’s face it, it’s bound to go wrong and then there’s the hassle of taking it back to the shop or ringing up to arrange a return and then having to wait in all day for DHL to pick it up and then chasing it when it still hasn’t re-appeared in a month and then arranging another day to wait in while DHL deliver it to your neighbours…
So it’s no suprise for my friends to hear me being snooty about the iPhone and Similar Devices Too Small To Look At The Internet With. And how I sneered at the advert about Apps: The things that let you know where to go out to eat, or calculated how to divide the bill between friends just made me angry as they all seemed to be over-engineering solutions for problems that don’t really exist, or making stupid people think that they can work something out that would be easier if they just gave it a go themselves!
Walkers crisp’s new ad campaign is very clever and works from most angles. It has involvement from the public at all stages and a great TV ad (unlike the horrendously misjudged ‘Mud, glorious mud’ from last year!). The supporting website is bloated and not very well thought out, but even there the content is good.
Got a leaflet from the council today about grants for insulation and advice on heating. Important stuff. It was titled something like ‘Make sure you keep warm and keep your heating bills low’. It arrived on a sunny April day.
I always make a point to contact people who look like they need help with their sites. It might be a e-newsletter I’ve been sent made out of block graphics and that definitely hasn’t been tested in Gmail, a flyer with a URL that produces a 404 page or a business card that has a URL that leads to a ’site coming soon’ message. Read more…
Photo by M Guy
…but not really. I met one of the people who taught me photography the other evening (and, by the way, another person who taught me photography is really quite well known now – see his work here). We were talking about digital photography and how it killed the high street camera shop and development labs. That got us talking about the other career killers out there in terms of technology: affordable computing, desktop publishing, WYSIWYG editors, digital printers, blogs. All things I’ve made use of and made money out of, but all of which (apart from the first, maybe) have devalued my expertise in the fields I trained in – print design, web design, photography.
All of which makes technology a bitter-sweet thing for me.
It was only when I went to a workshop on Strategy and Risk last week that I realised: I didn’t have a strategy.
I have values – the moral framework that I take with me into the work I do and the connections I have with people – and I have goals – things I want to achieve within the world of work. But Do It Properly didn’t have a strategy. The guy leading the course was calle d John Hector and he defined this as a list of actions to take, a game plan, a vision, a unifying definition.
More Wordle fun – this time with all the blog content to the beginning of March. Still fascinated by the way they convey information. Personally I expected more soup in there.
A great new toy – www.wordle.net. I’ve always found tag clouds a bit pointless and gimmicky but applying the same rules as a way to express a body of text gives a really interesting result. The post I’ve used to create this one is instantly recognisable.
You might have a day like I had yesterday at some point: the kids were being rude, both morning meetings were cancelled at the 11th hour, the lunch meeting was cancelled by text (20 minutes after it was due to start and just as the food I had ordered while waiting turned up at my table) plus it rained (on the day I had decided to walk). The meetings were all efforts to attract more business and I could have been doing something far more useful with my time than wondering round in the rain feeling despondent.
Paolo - glorious leader of South Wales web empire Refresh Creative. Paolo also reviews cheap laptops for his other website.
Andy - runs a web consultancy based in the sunny city of Bath. He has been working in the online industry for 13 years. His mission is to get his clients to "improve their business, achieve the results they want and not get suckered into spending money on things they don't need!".
