NeilCocker.com

OK, so it’s the worst title for a blog post ever.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of spending some time sitting in the office of a middle-aged, and very successful, “traditional” businessman. And by that I mean he ran a company in the service industry in which, on the surface of it, many of us wouldn’t consider particularly exciting. His company has a turnover in the millions, and was growing rapidly.

He was smart, engaging, open-minded and over the course of two meetings we struck up a good rapport. It occurred to me that he would make an ideal business mentor. Many entrepreneurs swear by their mentors, and rightly so. For most in the early stages of their business lives they are an invaluable source of support, wisdom and advice. But one thing that’s never really discussed is the benefits that the mentor could get out of the relationship.

In my meeting with the successful businessman he mentioned how he felt many of his peers were staid and negative in their approach to business, and that the business scene in Cardiff was lacking in inspiration. I replied that he needed to meet some of the people I chat to on a regular basis. Some of the most creative, innovative, and inspirational “young” people I know are living and working here in Cardiff, building exceptionally exciting businesses. I wondered how much he would benefit from coming to a TEDxCardiff or NOCCI event, which are characteristically attended by early adopters, ambitious startups, entrepreneurs, web-heads, and people at the innovative, cutting edge of what Cardiff has to offer.

So here’s my proposal – what about a scheme that pairs up younger and older entrepreneurs? The wisdom and mentoring would still be “passed down” from the older of the two, but the younger would be able to reignite their passion for innovation, introduce them to new technology and ways of working.

I was in Ireland last weekwith Mediasnackers, helping people learn about social media, and how to engage with their audience on a really personal level. Many of them were from the generation above mine, and once they had the opportunity to see new technology and media in action and play with it (rather than just seeing it referenced in newspapers), they were absolutely blown away at the potential. Until that point they had seen the new web/media landscape as this insurmountable mountain of buzzwords and brandnames. But once you can sit them down and show them, they understand very quickly.

And so imagine what would happen if once a month (or however frequently suited them), these two entrepreneurs sat down over lunch and chatted. That one-to-one aspect is considered integral to the success of mentoring, so surely it could benefit the more senior of the pairing too… The wealth of business experience would flow one way, and the knowledge and access to exciting, innovative businesses and products would flow the other way.

Good idea? Who could we get to set this up and support it?

And who would you like to be your mentor, and what would they learn from you?

There’s two videos here that I think every new (or old) business should watch. The first one looks at why we do what we do. It’s very powerful and I imagine everyone who watches it re-appraises their business or project. Thanks to DK for introducing me to it.

The second talk is by Duke Stump from last year’s Do Lectures. I was lucky enough to be in the audience for this talk (and sing drunken sea shanties later that evening with Duke). Duke has serious brand expertise from working at the likes of Nike, through to his own brand consultancy focusing on sustainability.

There’s so much great stuff in this talk, and while it’s not instantly clear what the talk is heading towards, the second half builds towards talking about creating a “bonfire brand”, something people gravitate towards in order to get warm and have conversations around. There’s lots of little gems scattered throughout, too, often touching on our responsibility to the world around us.

“If you have a company of meaning, of value, you have created effortless loyalty”.

“Great brands have great cultures”.

“If the US National Electricity Grid was 5% more efficient it would be the equivalent of taking 53 million cars off the road…”

“People don’t want perfection, they want honesty”.

To watch the video, and find out more about Duke, click here.

A few little bits.

1 – Apparently, according to Business Insider Magazine, I’m one of Wales top 25 young entrepreneurs. Which is nice.

2 – If you have an intersting idea and would like to present it at The Green Man festival (Ignite / Pecha Kucha style), and get a free ticket in return, you should download this PDF and have a look.

I think this is fast becoming my new maxim.

We’re in the process of designing and building a brand new site for Dizzyjam, and throughout the process we’ve been keenly spotting opportunities to remove a paragraph here, strip out a step of the sign-up process there, and just delete pages altogether. The simpler it is, the better for our users and customers.

But it’s something I’ve been trying to install into my life as well. Yesterday I was in a really crappy mood. I was tired anyway, but I just had too much to do, and as a result ended up doing very little of it. For the last few months I’ve slowly been dealing with the aftermath of moving house, getting rid of unwanted stuff, changing address on accounts for things I’d forgotten about etc etc. And over the last few days I’ve had the quadruple whammy of having to sort out the MOT for my car, get a new tyre, inform the DVLA of the address change, and start getting quotes for insurance. Partly due to my inefficiencies, and partly due to the inefficiencies of the systems used by those organisations responsible, the whole thing has eaten up a considerable chunk of my week.

And all for what? A car. One solitary possession, albeit a fairly major one, had taken up all that time just to maintain. Imagine what all the other myriad possessions are doing to my time in terms of storage, upkeep, renewal, disposal etc etc. Never mind the environmental and ethical implications of every purchase. The emotional baggage with each possession is enough to drive most of us into the ground!

I gave a talk a while back about my desire to simplify my life, and the last few days have been hammering it home again. Could I rely on public transport, and hire a car when I needed to? Maybe.

But I stumbled across a great article about fell-running, which explored the themes of risk, the wilderness and personal challenge. The following few lines really made me sit up straight. I read them over and over again. And yes, apart from the challenge, this is EXACTLY why I love running, mountain walking and exploring off the beaten track. Some of the wisest words I’ve ever seen written, and all tucked away in the online archives of a newspaper….

“Later, taking a last peek out of our tent door in the hope of discerning a star or two in the cloud-black sky before sinking into the sweetest of exhausted sleeps, we concluded that this was the nub of the matter. We are richer now than we were in Brasher’s day, richer than our parents or grandparents were; but we are also more stressed, more deeply in thrall to the addictions of getting and spending. We have more possessions, and they tyrannise us. Each new mod con must be shopped for, maintained, insured, upgraded; each new thing must be stored, kept track of, kept secure, tidied; each new debt must be serviced; and the whole package is paid for in overwork, time poverty, 24/7 availability and 24/7 insecurity. We have more, and we have less.

In such a world, freedom is both more precious and more elusive. And one of the few surefire ways of liberating ourselves from the tyranny of the consumer society is to put ourselves beyond its reach. This is one of the attractions of all long days in the hills: you escape from all those things”.

And the thing is, we constantly strive for more. For the next thing, promotion, acquisition… And when we get there? The target moves or changes. The grass becomes greener just over that hill. We constantly have a target. And we’re never going to reach one that completely satisfies us, are we?

As an entrepreneur my life is a constant set of targets and goals. But I do them for the challenge and the excitement, not so I can acquire more stuff. But it’s an interesting dilemma. Entrepreneurship is so often about the acquisition of wealth. I want it to be about the acquisition of life….

Photo Credit: “Sunset Runner” joshjanssen @ flickr. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.

Those who know me, know that at the end of last summer I attended the Do Lectures (the first of my posts about it here). It was an incredible weekend, and reinforced the concept of “Doing” in my mind. Everyone there was a doer. They changed the world in varying ways, and always for the good. Sometimes just their presence somewhere was enough to have a positive impact. And recently I’ve been thinking more and more about the impact on any given community of the doers within it.

This blog is a small celebration of a handful of people in our community who do cool, creative things that other people benefit from.

Lisa Heledd jones

I bumped into Lisa Heledd Jones and Ben Partridge a few days ago, and they told me that they were off to Machynlleth Comedy Festival as volunteers. It’s the first year for the event, and I’m assuming that it couldn’t survive without the help of volunteers. Lisa and Ben gave their time, all for the love of being involved, and for the good of the community.  I loved reading their tweets from Machynlleth – it sounded like an excellent weekend. And they freely gave their time despite the fact they have enough on their plates as it is. They run The Junket Club, what I can only describe as a series of utterly brilliant “bijou” comedy events that take place in a variety of weird and wonderful locations. They bring top comedians to planetariums, artists’ lofts, churches, and then give all the money to charity.

When you’re at one of their events you feel part of something truly special. Partly because you meet new likeminded people, partly because there’s a real sense of community, partly because it’s just so much fun! And if were to ask Lisa and Ben why they do it, I’m sure their answers wouldn’t be “for the money” (they give it all away, anyway), or for the attention. I’m almost certain their answer would be that it’s for the fun of it. For the love of comedy. And the love of being part of their community and seeing people have fun.

Lisa also co-founded Scrabble Sunday, which has seen many a tile-freak sweat over a triple word score………

Olwen Moseley

Another example is Olwen Moseley of Cardiff Design Festival, another non-profit event that brings the local design community together. And if that’s not enough, she spends her weekends clearing up other people’s litter.

And Matt Joyce, an integral part of the Designer Violence collective who aim to instigate collaboration in the creative community, notably through publishing free magazines of brilliant illustrations just for the joy of sharing what others can do with ink and paper. Alongside that there’s this website he co-curates which has free, beautiful desktops for anyone to download. I only discovered it yesterday, and I’ve already changed my desktop 15 times because there’s so much to choose from!

There’s Claire Hill, co-organiser of Dirty Protest, a regular night of theatre and comedy that showcases some of the best local talent in town. And she’s an integral part of the “arts and crafts” scene (which is probably the un-coolest way I could possibly have described it), getting stuck in with her own range of jewellery.

Matt Joyce

And what about Geoff Rogers who set up Thing A Week to bring photographers of all levels together to have fun and hone their craft? And Claire Heat and Chyrelle Rayman-Bacchus who set up Cardiff Girl Geek Dinners to bring together the local female web/tech community as an antidote to their male-dominated industry.

The thing about these people, these instigators, doers, makers, is that by their very actions they bring people together. They enable us to connect on a more human level, when we live in a super-connected, but less personal world. It’s all very well being able to invite all your friends and family to something cool with the click of a button on Facebook, but there’s got to be someone out there organising the stuff for us to do. And, interestingly, you’ll usually find that these people aren’t just involed in one thing, but several.

It’s become more and more clear to me over recent months and years that life is far too short not to get out there and do fun stuff. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve forced myself to go out to do something with friends when all I wanted to do was sit at home and watch TV. But not once have I ever got back and wished I’d stayed in to watch re-runs of QI. And Facebook, Twitter, and the host of other social media sites/applications out there make this so easy now, and it’s good to have people to give us things to do! There’s even a Facebook group just to bring all the fun stuff together…

So what makes them do what they do?

I wish I knew. Malcolm Gladwell would call them “Connectors”, probably. In his Tipping Point book he describes them as the people who “link us up with the world … people with a special gift for bringing the world together.” They are “a handful of people with a truly extraordinary knack [... for] making friends and acquaintances”.

But I think it’s more than that. I think it’s about the desire to have fun, the desire to do something. Anything. To change the world around you, from the most trivial to the most astonishing ways.

And of course, we also see this trait in scientists, charity workers, volunteers…. But I’m talking about those people around us who make the world more fun, more colourful.

This short celebration of the “Doers of Cardiff” is just a handful of people that I happen to know of, and that came to mind. There are many more I’ve missed, and doubtless forgotten.

Please add your doers in the comments. They all deserve to be recognised!

Anyone who knows me, or follows me on Twitter, will know that on Wednesday night I co-organised TEDxCardiff in Wales Millennium Centre. It was an evening of talks and performances by brilliant people from all over the UK. People travelled from as far away as Bournemouth and York to be in the audience. We had people watching live online in far-flung places such as America, Portugal and the middle east. And the whole thing was pulled together in our spare time by Claire and I, with the help of a small handful of brilliant volunteers.

TEDxCardiff is part of a scheme run by TED.com, that allows people to run TED-like events in their own city. If you’re not already aware of it I’ll leave you to discover the brilliance of TED in your own time. It’s basically a conference where brilliant people deliver amazing, courageous, jaw-dropping, inspiring talks.

I’m really looking forward to the talks from our event being edited and going up online so I can share them with those who couldn’t join us on the night. And so I can watch them all again in a more relaxed state!

Firstly, I want to personally thank the speakers and performers for generously giving their time and expertise to give us such an entertaining and inspiring evening. And the sponsors who were so generous with their time and resources. And finally our amazing volunteers who painted, carried, filmed, stapled, ran, bought, designed, created and worked for many, many hours. I am truly in awe of all of them for their commitment.

I learned quite a lot during the process of pulling together:

1.People’s capacity to commit their time for nothing in return, other than to be involved with such an event, is nothing short of amazing. The speakers, sponsors and volunteers all have my undying admiration.

2.If we do this again, we need a bigger team. It was just too much for Claire and I to do just on our own. I took most of the week off and put 45 hours of work into in just the first 3 days this week, and the day itself was incredibly stressful. And things such as press and PR just fell by the wayside while we concentrated on the practicalities of making the event happen.

3.People who don’t pay for tickets, or pay very little, don’t value them as much and are much more likely to not turn up. We had an overwhelming demand for the tickets (they sold out in record time), but on the night we had empty seats in both sessions, which was a real shame, knowing that there were other people who would loved to have been there.

4.The decision to hold the first session at 5pm might have been a little flawed. It’s a bit too early for people to get there from work (and may have accounted for some of the empty seats if people were held up in the office), they haven’t had a chance to get changed, eat, and have a chance to unwind before coming along. That’s possibly why the second session crowd was bigger, and seemingly more responsive.

5. Maybe a Saturday session is the way to go in future. We could do a longer day, with bigger breaks, and some breakout sessions to give people more chance to mingle and “network”.

6. The person who develops a universal presentation software format will earn a fortune, and I’ll personally give them everything in my bank account (£4.67). It was by far and away the biggest source of headaches over the course of the evening. And without DK and Andy, it would have been twice as hard!

7. We probably need to communicate the restrictions of the TEDx format a bit better. The feedback we had often mentioned a desire for Q&As with speakers. Something which the TEDx license doesn’t allow us to do, for example.

8. Having said that, the feedback was almost entirely positive, which is a huge relief. When you’ve put so much time and effort into something for no return, it’s easy to be hurt by any criticism. But there didn’t really seem to be any! Here’s a quick overview of the results:

I’m quite happy with that graph, of course!

(Updated 19/04/10)

Photos courtesy of Ali Gibbs and Rob May. Plenty more here!

Here’s a list of thank-yous. We couldn’t have made this event happen without them:

Wales Millennium Centre – Sponsor
Ed Truckell – Sponsor
Sequence – Sponsor
Multistream – Sponsor

Ian England – programme design
Andy McKay – programme printing and AV assistance
Laura Howe – Set design
Jo Burnett – Runner / Volunteer
Lynsey Jackson – Runner / Volunteer
Kirsten Loza – Runner / Volunteer
Rob May – Photography
Derek Russell – Intro videos
Alistair Gibbs – Photography

And finally, our speakers – DK, Matthew Cashmore, Paul Clarke, Tara Busch, Dave Haynes, Steve Robinson, Wendy Sadler, Ruffstylz & Beatbox Fozzy, Jo Taylor and Robert Simpson.

I’m currently collecting my thoughts about TEDxCardiff. It was such a whirlwind I haven’t really formulated any proper “response” to all the amazing feedback we’ve had. So, in the meantime, here’s the two intro videos that were done for us by the brilliant Derek Russell. And here’s a link to the write up by Hannah Waldram of the Guardian.

I contributed in a very small way to Prof Ian Hargreaves review of the creative industries in Wales.

You can get the report from the NOCCI website, here.

I haven’t read it all yet, but it’s a welcome document and I hope it provokes a lot of positive discussion about the subject.

EDIT: Just been brought to my attention that SWN festival was mentioned in there as something that should be supported. Brilliant!

Well, I just received a great newsletter from Creative Clusters. It finishes with a few lines from what appears to be an excellent talk on creativity, given at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit. Resist the temptation to scroll to the end to find out who gave the speech. Just read and enjoy….

I am mindful of the Arab proverb: “if a wind blows, ride it.” As I speak, there is a powerful wind blowing through this region. This wind is the creative energies of your people, who are aching to make their own mark on the world around them. Without this creative spirit, the museums, universities, and other fabulous buildings you have planned will be empty shells. But ride this wind and you will raise from these desert sands something extraordinary: a capital of creativity that is modern … that is global … and that is fully Arab.

Your people are eager, talented, and young. They have aspirations in common with their peers in other parts of the world – yet they hold fast to the traditions that make them unique. Give them a society that rewards creativity. When you do, you will breathe life into your blueprints – and build a future worthy of your grand boulevards and glistening skyscrapers.

It’s only Rupert bloody Murdoch!

Cynical or genuine, it’s good stuff….

You can read his talk in full here.

The fourth Ignite Cardiff, held last week in the Wales Millenium Centre, seems to have a small amount of controversy attached to it. Certainly if you’ve been following the comments on various blogs and tweets that have been flying around since. And it all started with a negative review of the event, written by a blogger for WalesOnline, which is operated by the country’s biggest newspaper.

A bit of background: I’m co-founder of Ignite Cardiff, the first Ignite event in the UK – there are now many more around the country. Along with my partner in crime, Claire Scantlebury, I was responsible for bringing this rapid-fire presentation format to our lovely city to be enjoyed by creatives, geeks, entrepreneurs and anyone else who wanted to be involved. However, due to important commitments with a hot-tub in a forest, I wasn’t able to be at this particular event, our fourth since we started in late 2008. I was following the #ignitecardiff hashtag avidly via Twitter, much to my girlfriend’s, and our waiter’s, annoyance.

It’s worth noting at this point that I know just how much hard work goes into putting these events together, and the passion and commitment with which Claire and I put into them. And as I couldn’t be at this last one, Mark Stevenson kindly stepped in to help with organisation and presentation, offering his time and effort free of charge, like Claire and I, for no personal gain, other than enjoying bringing cool, creative people together.

Anyway, during the event there were a few negative tweets from @joniayn, and then the negative blog post. Joni has been both supported and shouted down for her opinions in the intervening few days, so I’m not going to add to the dialogue on that front. People a lot smarter than me (Mark Stevenson, Dan Allsobrook, Chris Csefalvay amongst others) have already said all that needs to be said, I think. The thing that intrigues me is that of the impact of Joni’s blog. Joni is, as far as I’m aware, a relatively unknown blogger whose approach to her piece was arguably less than “journalistic”. So why should it have had such a relatively large impact? And I don’t say these things as an insult, as I don’t know her and I’m sure she’s lovely. It’s perhaps easy for me to say this as I wasn’t as integral to the event as I normally am, so I’m less likely to be hurt by her piece, but I believe she has a fundamental right to express her opinion. And I think that whenever you’re doing something attended by up to 200 people in a public venue, there’s always going to be people with opinions on what works and what doesn’t; what should be and what shouldn’t. There will always be detractors if you’re doing something successful. Besides, the world would be a dull place if we all liked the same thing, and Claire and I have received enough glowing compliments about our events over the last year or so to keep us going for a long time yet.

I personally believe that the impact of Joni’s blog came because she is a blogger for the portal of MediaWales, the home of the Western Mail etc. And so it had extra “weight”. But Joni clearly didn’t go about reporting the event with anything that could technically be classed as journalism as we tend to think of it. It was an opinion piece, which wasn’t particularly well researched. And that’s fine. That’s what 99.9% of blogs are. And long may they continue in such vein. But when distributed by such a large media outlet is the veracity, fidelity and impartiality of any such blogs given more credence than perhaps it deserves? Does WalesOnline need to be more explicit about the difference between its bloggers and its journalists?

The reason I say all this is because I believe we’re entering a hugely interesting age of “citizen journalism”, and one in which we need to carefully look at what constitutes journalism. I’m in no way qualified to do this (this is definitely a poorly researched opinion piece!) But if you are interested in this subject then I urge you to follow Glyn Mottershead, Katie Prescott and Hannah Waldram on Twitter.

If any of this sounds like I’m taking a negative stance towards Joni, I’m not. I hold her no ill will and am happy that she attended the event. And am happy for her to have expressed an opinion. I’m just highlighting what I believe to be some difficult days we face in determining the difference between “journalism” and “blogging”.

I’ll leave the last word to Carl Morris who, as usual, sums up how I feel about Ignite Cardiff more succinctly and wisely than I ever could!

p.s. To lighten the mood, and lift my battered ego, Beth at Cinch Marketing wrote some lovely stuff about me yesterday.

Oh, and the lovely Brian at Crimzn has started to upload some of the videos of the event here.

This morning I visited Mark Hooper at his new venture, Indycube, which is based in the ITV complex at Culverhouse Cross, Cardiff. Put simply, it’s a co-working space where you can hire a desk for a day, a week, a year etc, and be working alongside fellow creative types.

This quick video I took on my phone while I was up there explains it better, I think:

For more info, email Mark Hooper, or check out the Indycube website. Mark’s a lovely guy, and passionate about creating a space that works for creative people, and also allowing them to have plenty of input on what works for them, and what facilities they need.