I’m soon going to be meeting and interviewing some of Cardiff’s (and surrounding areas) entrepreneurs and startups. I’ll be editing the chats into nice bitesize podcasts for you to enjoy. But in the meantime I need a little help identifying relevant startups. I’m looking for innovative ideas, probably with a different business model to the usual.
If you know of any I should be speaking to then it would be fantastic if you could help me by letting me (but make sure you check the list first to see if someone’s beaten you to it).
Once you’ve done that, just click here and let me know which hot new startups I should be checking out.
*Update 25th March* Since writing this two days ago it has been read by thousands of people, been featured on several blogs, I’ve given interviews, many hundreds of people have tweeted about it, and I’ve received some very nice compliments from a few. Thanks to everyone who agrees that this is an important issue.
Hi Philip,
Yesterday I read an article by Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail. It’s basic premise was that because Japan was rich and they were our enemies in the Second World War we shouldn’t be offering them our support (financial or emotional) in their time of need. We shouldn’t have them in our thoughts and we shouldn’t send them any aid. In the past I’ve made no secret of my dislike of the Daily Mail, but I felt this was a step too far. It was blatantly racist, reactionary, and deeply offensive to entire population of Japan, not a single one of whom isn’t experiencing pain right now.
My friend John noticed that your advertising ran alongside Littlejohn’s piece, and suggested we tweet you to let you know how much we found this distasteful. Especially given that we both spend large amounts of money with your company. In fact, Tesco receive the vast majority of mine and my girlfriend’s weekly shopping budget. I’m not here to make a rash threat about boycotting your stores, but as someone who spends a large amount of my hard earned money every week with you I feel I have the right to voice my concerns about where you advertise.
So I tweeted you.
My tweet was picked up on by many people, retweeted and forwarded on Twitter by about 100 people, so I’m sure your inbox was brimming full when you next logged in, which you did to send a tweet a few hours later. But I was disappointed that your tweet wasn’t a reply to me or the people who had retweeted me or independently contacted you. It was to talk about something you’re doing in California. So, I read back through your tweets and noticed a member of your family was ill. I’m sorry to hear this. I hope to hear they return to full health very soon. Unless of course an ancestor of theirs did something to an ancestor of mine, in which case I couldn’t care less. Or at least that would be my position if I were Richard Littlejohn.
I run a company too. I know what it’s like juggling ethics and your bottom line. It’s not always easy. And I’m sure that advertising with the Daily Mail is an efficient means of reaching many of your target demographic. If it’s true what i’ve read, 1 in 5 pounds spent by Joe Public in the UK are spent at one of your stores. And this inevitably gives you a huge amount of power, both financially and politically. But, as someone wiser than me once said, “with great power comes great responsibility”. I’m sure you have a huge Corporate Social Responsibility department who are tasked with making sure that you do right in the eyes of the communities in which you build stores. And i’d like to believe that the people who work in that department do so with huge sincerity and without the cynical approach of just keeping the local populace quiet. They do it because they believe that a company of your size has the opportunity, or indeed the responsibility, to make the world a better place. But I think that the issue of your advertising with the Daily Mail goes above and beyond moral and social responsibility.
It’s actually about what is right.
Philip, I don’t want you to think that this is an issue of Guardian readers against Daily Mail readers, Tories against Labour, wishy washy liberals versus uncaring conservatives. For all I know you may be a Conservative-voting, Daily Mail reader yourself. This is about the fact that huge amounts of your company’s money is being paid to a newspaper that gives a mouthpiece to someone who is either purposely being offensive to many, many millions of people in order to improve his notoriety (and therefore ad revenue and paypacket), or who genuinely believes in the divisive words he writes.
It saddens me to say it but, like Tesco, Richard Littlejohn and the Daily Mail have real power. Their words are read by millions of people a day. Most of them are normal working people who are just honestly looking for a bit of news to accompany them on their teabreak. They read these words out of habit. But when these words are drip fed day after day, week after week, they inevitably become part of their psyche and daily thought-processes. They start to believe what they read.
The problem is that the words of the Daily Mail are often the words of hate. They are words that are designed to make their readership angry, fearful, and full of distrust and dislike for people they don’t know or understand. They make their readers believe that the nice Polish family that moved in next door are here to steal their jobs and live off their taxes. Or they twist medical facts to make their own sensationalist headlines that cause untold (and unfounded) health worries. They make young girls think that they’re too fat and they should aspire to a size zero lifestyle. They make you believe that everything causes cancer. They tell us to be scared of Islam, homosexuality and gypsies.
The Daily Mail makes Britain a more scared, less inclusive, more segregated, more hate-filled society. By giving them part of your advertising budget you are actively supporting homophobia, racism, sexism, and many other prejudices that are casually reeled off in its pages.
Do you want Tesco, the biggest retailer in our country, to be aligned with homophobia, racism and sexism? Is that the kind of company that you, or indeed any of us, want to be at the forefront of British business?
I’d like to think that the biggest retailer in the UK (and the third biggest in the world) is a company staffed by good people who will stand up for what’s right. And as the CEO I would like to think that you would be a role model for your staff and other businesses that aspire to be as successful as Tesco. Being successful and doing the right thing aren’t always mutually exclusive.
Please, Philip. Rethink your advertising strategy and don’t spend your money with companies whose sole mission is to scare, divide, and anger.
A few years ago (early 2007) Jo and I went on a DIY tour of the Baltics. When I came back I posted the following to a forum as a guide to a few friends that were planning on visiting soon. Anyway, I thought I’d post it on my own blog just in case it was of use to anyone else in the future, but mainly so I had a permanent record of our adventures.
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Seeing as a few of you are going to the Baltics on holiday, and for long weekends, I thought I'd do a little holiday diary thing with lots of hints and tips. Hopefully it’ll be a useful resource for someone someday. So here's what we did on a fortnight in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia…
We arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, a day late. Courtesy of AirBaltic c0cking up our tickets. Still, at least I got to watch the first leg of the Liverpool-Chelsea semi-final in a Gatwick hotel!
We'd got really cheap flights and knew the cost of living out there would be fairly low so thought we'd treat ourselves to nice hotels. And even then we were only paying the price of a Travelodge in London (about 60-70 quid a night). We arrived at the Ramada Vilnius to a much higher level of plushness than we anticipated. Gorgeous hotel, beautiful rooms, lovely facilities, and this was the view from our bedroom when we checked in late that night:
We spent the next day wandering around the beautiful old town. It's small and can be done in a day if you rush it but the weather was gorgeous and we took our time. Tons of old buildings. Everywhere is *spotless* (as were Latvia and Estonia) and the very occasional fag butt or sweet wrapper was a real surprise after a few days. We went to the cathedral, bell tower and up to the castle, which a great spot for getting a fantastic view of the city and getting your bearings.
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We basically just mooched around for a few days, eating drinking, checking out cathedrals etc. There seems to be a huge beautiful church on every corner. And most of them aren't even deemed worthy of being included in the guidebooks. Some of them would be major tourist attractions in most countries:
The nightlife in Vilnius seems really cool. Lots of nice, relaxed bars with great atmospheres. Everyone's very trusting (bags, phones, coats etc are left lying around) and it's all very chilled. Our particular favourite was "Briusly" (pronounced "Bruce Lee" and an alcoholic homage to the great man). We spent an evening in there getting bonkersed-up on cocktails:
Our hotel was so posh that on every floor there was a mini-reception with wall-hangings, gilt-edged chairs and all that malarkey. Certainly too good for a pair like us.
I won't go into too much further detail about what sights there are to see in Vilnius, as it's all fairly central and a basic guidebook (download one for free from the indispensible In Your Pocket will guide you easily around them all. Some quick recommendations though – the Frank Zappa statue (apparently for no other reason than someone thought it would be a good idea) is probably not worth going to unless you're in that area anyway. It's just a head on a stick in a carpark – funny though; definitely eat at Lokys a subterranean medieval restaurant – amazing food, crazy atmosphere, anyone over 5'4" will have to duck to get down the tiny winding stairs; The KGB Museum is a grim, but essential experience – a reminder that it was only 15 years ago that this was a Soviet occupied country, with many thousands being shipped to camps in Siberia, being "interrogated", executed and treated appallingly by the KGB.
On our final day in Vilinius we spent much of it chilling at a riverside pub in Užupis, a hippy/student district which has (only half-jokingly) declared itself independent of Lithuania, and has its own constitution.
The only way to travel around the Baltics (other than hiring a car) is by bus. Trains are apparently unreliable and they don't even link up across borders in some cases. Between Estonia and Lativa (i think), you'd have to get off at one point, walk with your bags for a few miles then get on another train. So as it was we got on a five hour bus journey to Riga. It was with the main operator in the area, Eurolines and cost about a tenner each. Perfectly comfortable. Just like a National Express but with a little more leg-room.
Sadly we only had two nights in Riga as we'd decided to avoid it on a weekend as we'd heard it was getting over-run with British stag nights and the like. Again we got a lot better hotel for our money than we expected. It's seriously worth paying the extra fiver-or-so a night for the old-town views. But only if you're not afraid of heights. The view from our room…
We were on the 22nd floor, and the glass elevator ride up there is something seriously spectacular. There's a famous bar up on the 26th floor so you're often packed in there with loads of tourists and someone (normally Mrs Raygun) steadfastly refusing to look out the window, grabbing the railings like their life depended on it. Here's a video what I done maded:
We were pretty knackered after our long journey so we ate at one of the hotel's two or three restaurants (it's a huge place!) and had lovely grub. Early night and then up first thing to do the tourist bit. We'd picked up a free copy of In Your Pocket at the bus stop and it had a suggested walk around the old town that takes in all the major sights. Seeing as we were on a bit of a tight schedule we thought it'd be a good thing to do. Unfortunately the temperature had plummeted to near-zero temperatures and all the museums, cathedrals etc are closed on a Monday. So we basically did it in about 45 minutes, when it should have been a leisurely 3 or 4 hours, plus stops for drinks at street-side cafes etc. As a result of the weather and being there on pretty quiet days we didn't really do it justice and spent a fair bit of time in shopping malls and coffee shops (keep an eye out for A.L.L. Cappuccino coffee shops – great tunes, great coffee, lovely staff). Riga's a completely different city to Vilnius. It's much more "Soviet", with grandiose buildings, wide avenues etc. Quite grey as well, once you're outside the old town.
On our second day we went for a look around the market, which is housed next to the bus station in massive zeppelin hangars. A real eye-opener. There's about five of these huge hangars. Some have really tightly packed stalls in them selling everything from electronics to clothing, to honey, to pets etc etc. Others are more spacious (like the one below which exclusively housed the meat-sellers).
You could do all your shopping at this market and never need to go anywhere else. The clothing stalls were a particular eye-opener. I was very tempted to treat Jo to a whole new wardrobe….
To avoid the cold again we spent an afternoon relaxing in the gym/health center on the 27th floor of the hotel. It's inspiring spending half an hour several hundred feet up in the air, running with a view like this (note that I'm jogging higher than several cathedral spires:
After my run I went for a sauna (one wall was made of glass so you’re 27 floors up, sweating, and enjoying the view) and had a surreal conversation with a naked German sauna-enthusiast who told me about rubbing honey and salt into your skin whilst drinking schnapps. At one point he was stood in front of me "helicoptering" his towel around his head to circulate the heat. I've had nightmares about that image ever since. Here's the sauna, sadly without my fat, teutonic friend:
Knowing it was our last night there we went out for some great food (really cheap too!) and headed back to the spectacular Skyline Bar on the 26th floor of the hotel, taking in some beautifully lit churches on the way back.
We were getting pretty blasé about the views by this point but it was felt pretty classy sipping cocktails to a soundtrack of deep, jazzy grooves with this nightime view (not my photo, btw)
So, another five hour bus journey brought us to our hotel in Tallinn. Thankully the temperature had risen a couple of notches and so we took a brief stroll around the streets, before settling into the brilliant African Kitchen where we chilled out for a few hours with gorgeous food (don't miss the honey bread and peanut sauce starter) and a soundtrack of afro-beat, reggae and African jazz. We really didn't want to leave.
Again, I won't bore you too much with the tourist options in Tallinn. There's loads to do and see in the old town and we spent a good few days exploring. I totally recommend buying a Tallinn Card, though. Every museum, activity, public transport etc is either free or seriously discounted. One of the highlights was St Olav's, a huge church that allows you to climb (a long way) to the top for spectacular views of the old town. Being separated from the huge drop by a bit of chicken-wire was funny though!
Our visit to Tallinn was slightly coloured by the riots that happened the nights before our arrival, basically due to a statue being moved. The Soviet population (about 25 percent of Estonia) views it as a symbol of their victory over Nazism, whilst the Estonians view it as a symbol of the Soviet occupation and just didn't want it in their town centre any more. Cue huge clashes, looting etc etc. So there were police *everywhere* whilst we were in town, but at least we felt safe!
We'd been up some pretty high buildings during our visit to the Baltics, but nothing was to prepare us for the heights of the TV Tower. You go 170 metres up in a proper rickety old lift (don't watch the display if the sight of it rapidly flicking from "16" to "4" to "9" to "22" etc etc is going to give you the willies). Quite disturbing really. We had a coffee at the top, took some photos then went back down to get some oxygen!
One day I got a text from a guy we'd DJ'd for in Tartu (Estonia's second largest city) several years ago. He invited us up for a night in his club. We obliged. Apart from more time on a bus we had a great time and stayed in a cheap, clean university hostel, seeing as we were already paying for a hotel back in Tallinn as well. the next day our friend Mac, and his girlfriend drove us up to the north east of Estonia to a mining museum. Now it's not often my idea of a good-hangover cure to drive for two hours through poor Estonian villages to the Russian border, with a view to going to damp, underground caves but it turned out to be hilarious. The Baltic sense of health and safety is non-existent. In other words – "See that big rusty drill and that crumbling limestone rockface? Get stuck in….". Our good friend DJ Mac was first up!
We laughed at the overhead, exposed electricity cables, dripping with water. We marvelled at the massive, ancient rock harvesting machines, noisily clunking and hewing away mere inches from our soft, squishable heads. We politely refused the offer of an "authentic miner's meal" down in the dank catacombs…
So, we bid a fond adieu to our Estonian buddies and head back to Tallinn for one last night. We pushed the boat out and went for pretty much the most expensive meal of our trip (3 courses, bottle of wine, *huge* frozen vodka to start off in traditional style – 40 quid total) in the fantastic Russian style restaurant, Troika. We hadn't booked (advisable, apparently) so got the only table left in the place. Right underneath the "balcony" where the dude with the guitar belts out Russian folk hits. It was funny for a while… For the first time we genuinely struggled being vegetarians. There was only one starter and one main that we could have (luckily both were flippin' delicious!). Mostly everywhere else in the Baltics we'd had to be a little selective about which restaurants we went in, but had got by with a pizza if the worst came to the worst.
So, we stumbled out into the night air and the gorgeous central square of Tallinn. A whirlwind trip around the Baltics. We loved every minute!
I came across this in my Twitter feed earlier today:
It’s inspiring and thought-provoking. And with the apparent rapid spread of this video (over 20,000 views so far in the 2 days since it’s been posted), I expect it probably won’t be too long until he’s got some work. To be honest, with the way these things go I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets interviews on news channels and prime-time chat shows.
But what if he doesn’t? How could the huge reach of Twitter help him out?
I don’t know his personal cirumstances, and leaving aside his probable need for a roof over his head, but in order to start a career as a professional voice-over man he technically only needs a laptop ($400/£250) some free audio software, and a half-decent microphone ($100/£65). With a small amount of training in how to use the software it really wouldn’t take a lot for him to start creating his own recordings, online portfolio, and eventually provide high-quality work for clients from the warmth and comfort of his own home.
So, for around $500/£320 we (the social media users of the world) could change this guy’s life at a point where he really looks like he’s willing to make it happen. Here’s a guy who is honest about the difficulties he’s had in his life, and is looking to start afresh. I for one would happily give him a tenner.
But how would this happen?
Sites like Justgiving have made it brilliantly easy to donate to charity, but giving to individuals isn’t quite so simple, especially if they’re not someone you can hand the money to personally.
He could set up his own site and ask for Paypal donations?
We could set up a Twitter/Facebook fund that we all contribute a few quid to, and then vote each week on who gets a “grant” or award from it?
With the relatively tiny amounts probably needed, maybe micro-donation services like Flattr could be the answer? It would take only minutes to raise the $500 needed if this video continues to spread the way it has done.
Any other ideas?
As social media makes it easier for brilliant stories like this to come to our attention wouldn’t it be amazing for it to be easy to donate to them, too?
If we can find a way to help him out, and he gets the facilities to do so, I’ll personally guarantee that we use him, and pay him, for a job doing a voiceover on our next Dizzyjam promo video.
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Hat-tip to Brian Travers (from UB40) whose original tweet about this reached me via an Urbanfly retweet.
UPDATE – Since I first saw the video it’s picked up over 100,000 more views, is getting about 30 comments A MINUTE, and I’ve just received news that he’s been offered some radio appearances. Excellent!
UPDATE 2 – In the 18 hours or so since I first saw this, the video has received a further MILLION views, homeless voiceover guy is landing lots of job offers it seems, and the guy who uploaded the video is going to give him a phone so that he can respond to all the offers. When used for things like this, the internet is a true force for good. But how could we formalise this process?
UPDATE 3 – Over 4.5 million views in the last 24 hours, many job offers, and a news piece on CNN:
The following is an article that I was asked to write for my friends at PSMW, a department of the Welsh Assembly Government that improves the skills of managers across the public service.
In April this year I co-organised the TEDxCardiff conference. We had speakers from all over the UK talking about everything from what can be learned from tribal cultures to the visible spectrums of light in the universe. And while they were speaking it wasn’t just the people in the audience who were learning. We had people watching live online from as far afield as the United Arab Emirates and New Zealand. And since the event, we’ve had tens of thousands of viewers from all over the world taking advantage of the archived online talks. And none of them paid a penny.
Every day there are brilliant, inspiring and informative events happening all over the world, and many of them are recorded with the sessions, talks and seminars being broadcast live on the web then archived for anyone to watch online at their convenience. And PSMW’s Summer School is a perfect example. Talks from such events are viewed by millions and millions of people in every country on the planet. They watch them at home, in their lunchbreaks, and amongst friends. The talks are shared via email, Twitter and Facebook. People hold viewing parties, make them required watching as part of university courses, and some organisations have regular sessions where staff all gather round to watch talks at the beginning of the week. I know of companies that have completely changed their business plan because of a talk they’ve watched online.
Of course, the real magic at conferences like these tends to happen as a result of a chance conversation over breakfast, or a fortuitous introduction in the bar. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn a huge amount from one of the thousands (and free) archived talks available online. They can provide inspiration, talking points, a new perspective or just some straight, old fashioned wisdom.
But, as with being at conferences in person, gravitating towards something or someone you already know everything about is not always the wisest idea. It’s not always the comfortable choice, but you learn the most when you’re with people different from yourself and immersing yourself in ideas that are new to you. I’m a big believer in putting people from different disciplines in the same room and just seeing what happens. It’s all too easy to rely on speaking to the same people about the same problems. I often organise events that bring together people from across the creative industries and you can usually see the designers gravitating towards each other, those in advertising standing together in the corner, and the film-makers making their own celluloid cluster. And in these circumstances it’s rare that new things are learned.
But, if you mix things up a bit remarkable things can happen. Study after study has shown that the more diverse a group, the better its ability to solve problems and learn new things. I once introduced a TV director to a high wire acrobat and they both learned so much from that conversation that they stayed in touch on a regular basis. The acrobat was able to give the director a huge insight into how best to rig cameras for aerial shots, while the director helped the acrobat understand from which angles his aerial work would best be appreciated. Things they may not have learned from their usual colleagues.
If you can’t get to a conference, but still need that mental stimulation provided by being around some differing opinions as well as some kindred spirits, then why not check out some of the sites listed below where you will find more inspiration and wisdom than you’ll ever need. Most talks are between 15 and 30 minutes, so are quick and easy to digest. For maximum effect why not grab a coffee, a handful of colleagues, and head to the boardroom with a laptop to take a 15 minute “brain spa”.
“It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.”
- Antoine de Saint Exupery -
You may remember that I recently wrote a blog post about the “Doers of Cardiff”, people or groups that I happen to know, or know of, that do wonderful work in bringing their communities together for the love of it. There are countless charities, programmes and initiatives that deserve attention, and I couldn’t possibly list all those worthy of a mention. I’m thinking here more of those individuals and groups that make their community better just by being in it, and not for any apparent commercial gain.
Helia Phoenix
Hack Flash is a group that “wants to get everyday people involved with some fun and collaborative art projects”. Their highest profile project so far is the WeAreCardiff.co.uk website, which aims to tell the stories of Cardiff folk, and their associations with our city. I was privileged to be their first contributor. The group is run by Helia Phoenix, along with Adam Chard and Simon Bradwick. But Helia is notable for her involvement in other projects, such as setting up the @RoathCardiff Twitter feed, one of the first examples of hyper-local social media in our city, keeping people up to date with what’s going on in one of Cardiff’s most vibrant suburbs. She was also a key writer for the sadly now defunct Kruger magazine, and has written a biography of Lady GaGa!
Outside the empty shop
ARK are a social design group “from diverse backgrounds, who are interested in using design thinking to respond to social issues in our community”. Although it sounds lofty, they often approach problems with a huge sense of fun. Their Empty Shops project, which aimed to re-appropriate for positive use one of many empty spaces caused by the recession, saw short film showings, workshops, poetry readings, art and many, many laughs all take place over a weekend in an empty shop that would normally have been ignored by visitors to Castle Arcade. They’ve worked with the council on improving cycling safety within the city, run a mini-games festival, and I’m sure have many plans for future and ongoing projects. The fact that two of them, Lynsey and Laura, volunteered for TEDxCardiff and made it possible for us to run the event, just demonstrates the type of people that they are!
Marc Thomas is a journalism student in Cardiff, and runs the blog “Journal of Plastik” which focuses on the creative goings on in South Wales. It’s very quickly gone from a one-man project to having several contributors, and a great set of articles. And while it’s by no means the only blog about Cardiff, and what happens here, it stands apart from many others simply because of the quality of its content (which includes podcasts and mixtapes) and design. And I understand Marc has plans for even bigger things for the site.
Speaking of Marc’s site, they did a great job of covering the recent Swn festival in the city. And this brings me to a brief honorary mention for John Rostron. I’ve known John for many years now (nearly half my life!), and although putting on events is his “job”, and as such a commercial venture which I suppose disqualifies him from this “list”, the passion with which he approaches it, and the long, punishing hours that he puts into creating events for a city that he loves, mean that he deserves huge recognition for what he’s done. Cardiff would certainly have been a duller place without him all these years.
John Rostron
As with all the people and projects I’ve all-too-briefly covered over these two blog posts, I’m sure the thought often runs with them that it would be amazing to be able to make a living from what they’re doing. And indeed, it would be fantastic if they eventually could. But that’s not why they do them in the first place. It’s for the love of it, the joy of being involved in something that matters, even if only in a small way.
And this brings me back to the quote at the top of the page. It struck me as something profoundly true. And I read it again and again last night. In fact, I actually meant to post this blog yesterday evening, but i got distracted by some Dizzyjam work, which led me to checking out the site of Leeds band Hope and Social, and one post on their site in particular. It recounted one evening where they put on a gig in an old church crypt, but also cooked and waited on the 70 lucky people who were lucky enough to be able to squeeze into it. They also took the opportunity to ask the audience to help them record a live track for their album, having filled wine bottles on each table with perfect amounts of water to give them the required notes when tapped or blown by the diners.
It feels a bit odd to shoe-horn the exploits of a band from Yorkshire into a blog about “doers” from Cardiff, but I think these two videos (if you don’t have time to read the entire post as linked above), demonstrate the Antoine de Saint Exupery quote more perfectly than any of my ramblings. The undisguised joy on the band’s faces as it’s clear that everything is going perfectly to plan in the recording is all you need to see to understand their reasons for doing these things. I urge you to check out their music on Spotify, or you can buy their album (they operate a Pay What You Want policy, so it’s free if you don’t want to pay).
Anyway, take 10 minutes, put in your headphones, and check out these two videos in order. If you’re anything like me, you’ll become instant fans of these “doers”.
Hope you enjoyed those. As before, I will have inevitably missed out countless people who deserve recognition. Your nominations and recommendations in the comments, please!
I went to a preview screening of The Social Network last night. It’s a great film about Facebook, it’s creator Mark Zuckerberg, and the lawsuits that followed. It was written by Aaron Sorkin who wrote The West Wing, my favourite TV show of all time. It’s such a smart piece of cinema, and one I expect will comfortably have a massive opening weekend. Harvard law professor and copyright activist Lawrence Lessig agreed, but thought it slightly missed the point. His review makes some interesting observations about the reasons behind the phenomenal success of Facebook, and where Zuckerberg’s genius really lays. Regardless, the film comes with my hearty recommendation.
Today I was already in a good mood due to having had our big new offices to work in – it’s so nice to not be in cramped surroundings any more – and having watched the 3rd Chilean miner rescued from the bowels of the earth. I know that the news channels have taken a bit of flak for their 24 hour rolling coverage of it, but I was quite happy to have such a positive story oust the daily drudgery that we’re normally subjected to. It was a joy to hear news of every miner released. I admit to having shed a tear or two on watching the miners being reunited with their families. In my head I could hear David Tennant’s Dr Who exclaiming the brilliant, tenacious, wonderful, altruistic nature of human beings! Stories like these warm my heart, and give me hope.
It was stunning. Warm, smart, funny, and sexy. And it had buckets of soul. And I don’t mean to use “soul” as a lazy tag for “black” (Ailey’s company are almost exclusively african american, and perform to Nina Simone, gospel choirs and jazz-funk). I mean it to signify the humanity the performance was imbued with. Contemporary dance can often feel slightly “alien” and disconnected from reality (e.g. this piece I saw in London a few years ago), as if the dancers are recreating other-wordly movements, a purely athletic and artistic exercise. But Alvin Ailey’s dancers feel warm, and human, and perform with undisguised joy on their faces. It was an honour to be within a few feet of them for a few hours. They earned and deserved their lengthy standing ovation.
I’ve decided to close down NOCCI in its current form. It’s been a while coming, but it feels like the right thing to do.
The network started in the summer of 2007 in Cardiff as an antidote to the many business networks that seem to be populated by middle aged white men thrusting business cards at each other, only interested in where their next sale was coming from. At NOCCI events (which was called “Pollen” in the early days), there was very little agenda – just the chance for likeminded creative people and entrepreneurs to come together, have a drink on us, and make some new friends. It was a huge success and hundreds of people came to the early events in Cardiff.
Since then we’ve run NOCCIs all over the UK, had people meet at them that have gone on to form businesses together, seen hugely productive business relationships established, firm friendships forged, and been asked to help everyone from marketing agencies to the Welsh Assembly Government with communicating with people in the creative industries.
However, in the last 18 months my time has been increasingly pulled towards my main business, Dizzyjam, and I’ve had little to no time to put into NOCCI.
I realised that certain things needed to be improved with the network and website for it to flourish and fulfill its potential to be a creative industries network that was useful for anyone and everyone who wanted to be part of it, wherever they were in the world.
Firstly it needed some strong editorial input. Secondly it needed to be a central “calendar” where anyone could post relevant events. And thirdly it needed a better profile management and search system so that people could find likeminded people in their desired location in order to collaborate with them.
But with no time to devote to it, and with NOCCI having been set up as a pure labour of love, it needed an investor of some sort. I spent a lot of time speaking to potential investors, but ultimately it was a difficult sell. And without the backing, I found it difficult to administrate the network, set up new events, respond to the requests to run events from all over the world, plus justify the expense of adding the required functionality to the website.
But in that time there’s been a few other sites that have launched and/or come to the fore that are doing a brilliant job of either offering those services or improving on what NOCCI does.
Firstly, Creative Boom has loads of great articles about the creative industries and has started running events around the country, too. It’s also a fantastic looking site. Secondly, Creative Everyone has just launched, which fulfills a really important function that I wanted NOCCI to have. Namely, to provide a place where anyone can list an event they’re running. There’s so many great events running around the world, it’s fantastic to have somewhere that lists them all.
Also, I’ve often had ideas that I haven’t quite had the skillset to fulfill myself. And it’s been difficult to know where to find fellow entrepreneurs who have those skills I lack, and might want to join me to bring them to fruition. It looks like new startup Matchfounders might just be the place I’ve been looking for.
These sites all fulfill important functions that I wanted NOCCI to have. I wanted NOCCI to be all these things and more. But with them all appearing to do such a great job it seems silly to spend a lot of time and money bringing NOCCI up to speed.
An honourable mention should also go to Pete Lawrence‘s new project, PicNic Village, which promises to be really interesting.
However, the work I’ve been doing in the creative industries will continue. I’ll still be running events that bring creative people together, most notably Ignite Cardiff and TEDxCardiff, which I organise with Claire Scantlebury. I’ll also continue to help out any organisation that needs help with creative business, creative entrepreneurship and the creative industries in general.
Huge thanks must go to Claire Heat, who was a massive source of help and support in the early days when we were setting up, and Jo Burnett who was constantly helpful and willing to lend a hand. And also Bob in Middlesbrough, who started running events there that were the most successful of any NOCCI events outside of Cardiff.
I’ve had an amazing time running the network, met some incredible people who’ve gone on to be great friends, and I just hope it was of some benefit to the thousands of global visitors to the site, and the many, many hundreds of people around the UK that attended its events.
Edit: I’ve set up a new website/blog to cover this topic: Blackspotting.com.
Thanks to the many people who read and commented on my last blog about needing some time away from technology, the web, and social media.
It helped clarify a lot for me, and it gave me two ideas:
1 – Being someone who likes a physical challenge, and having not been able to do a triathlon this year due to injury, the thought of doing something relatively physical whilst getting away from it all appealed to me.
The current plan is to walk the length of the Taff Trail and back. A return trip from Cardiff to Brecon, in other words, along the Taff river and through the foothills of the Brecon beacons. It’s about 110 miles all in all. I may even make a small detour to climb Pen Y Fan. Just me, a small tent, a few books, and enough provisions to see me through. No phone, no laptop, no communications technology.
I plan to do this before the end of the year. The only problem is that I anticipate it’ll take 3 or 4 days, and I’m not sure where I’ll squeeze that in. The only weekend I have completely free before November (when the thought of doing it gets a little less appealing) is this weekend. Which makes the next 24 hours a bit hectic, if I’m definitely going to do it.
If anyone has any thoughts on campsites, places to stop, things to do on the way, then please let me know in the comments. I’ve given this incredibly little thought so far (it really is just an idea at this stage, but may be a fullblown plan by tomorrow morning), so any thoughts about how much food etc I should take with me, or whether there’s enough shops on the way, and all that kind of jazz would be very useful. It’s been a good few years since I planned an “expedition” like this, especially at such short notice. I walked a very hilly 62 miles in 24 hours once, so I reckon I could *just* do it in 3 days at 12 hours of walking a day. Or maybe I should take a more leisurely 4 days? Suppose it depends on where I can camp….
2 – Maf’s comment about a regularly enforced blackout, and the possibility of a local cottage where you could go in order to get away from it all, gave me an idea.
What if I found a space/venue/hall/cottage near Cardiff where a bunch of people could go (once a month?), hand in all technology at the door, then enjoy being “offline” for a few hours. It would maybe need two rooms (one for chatting, discussing ideas & books etc, and one room for silent reading, thinking, “cogitating”!), and possibly a few simple rules. These are just off the top of my head, and it may be that after some discussion they are completely without merit or totally un-needed.
e.g.
You have to commit to attending for at least, say, four hours there – no point just nipping in for half an hour to say hello to everyone and then leaving. Nobody benefits from that.
You have to spend your first 30-60 minutes there in the “quiet room” in order to calm down from the outside world. You can spend all your time there, if you like.
So, what does everyone think?
Your ideas for my walk, and for the monthly “digital switchoff” in the comments below, ta!
I'm MD of Dizzyjam, founder of defunct creative industries network NOCCI, co-founder of TEDxCardiff and Ignite Cardiff, a creative industries consultant, a music industry survivor & mentor, and according to some friends, a "creative industries ninja" and "a good egg".
