That’s it. My blackspotting dreams can come true anywhere. They’ve invented anti-wifi paint!

I genuinely can imagine a time in the not too distant future where cafes advertise that they are blackspots or, through the use of anti-wifi paint, they offer blackspot rooms.

In other news, I did a Dragon’s Den style pitch yesterday in front of a room full of potential investors.  As I wrote recently, I’m looking for investment in Nocci, and I got a few good leads. I’ll keep you up to date!

It wasn’t the best pitch I’ve ever given, and there were relevant points that I forgot to say. But I learned a lot from my poor talk at Ignite a few weeks ago, and so I was better prepared for trying to convey a lot of information in a short period of time. If anyone’s interested, here’s the script of the pitch I did (PDF with pictures!).

I’ve just been away for a relaxed weekend in West Wales (staying in the highly recommended Old Oak Barn) and while having lunch in a great pub in the beautiful little village of Little Haven got chatting to a local couple. They were middle-aged, owned a local bed and breakfast and blew away all of my preconceptions about who tracks their website traffic and is aware of the dark art of SEO…

I know relatively little about the subject but, while their website could do with a little work, they were more than aware of the benefits of their URL (pembrokeshirebedandbreakfast.com) which puts them on the front page of Google for that search term, and were fascinated by tracking traffic that came from blog posts, international sites and B&B listings sites. And their understanding of their business and their ability to track where a lot of it comes from is probably much improved because of it.

So, any other examples of “unlikely” businesses engaging in digital marketing? Or is it just me thinks it’s still the preserve of young, city-dwelling digital companies? Any carpenters, farmers or rural pubs?

Oh, and hello to Jan as I’m sure she’ll be reading if any clicks went from this blog to their site…!

Now imagine if the government just spent a small amount of money on sponsoring things like this, in order to improve your day. A smile in the morning during your commute could make the world of difference. The knock on effect could be incredible….

Thanks to @suzicatherine for the tip off about this one.

Update – a few people have mentioned that the top video is possibly a Coca Cola viral. Yep, it might be. Probably is. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that it would be amazing if something like this just happened on the tube while you’re on your way to work….

A quick Ignite Cardiff #3 wrap-up.

All the pics and vids I know of. Let me know if you know of any I’ve missed:

Claire’s pics

Rob May’s pics

Brian’s videos

Dafydd Rees’s pics

Some more on our Facebook group

Ali Gibb’s Flickr set

As I alluded to in my last post, I didn’t think my talk at Ignite Cardiff on Thursday was very good. And now that I’ve seen it I’ve realised it’s actually pretty awful.

BUT, I think I’m kind of glad it happened. I’ve got a few big talks to do over coming weeks, including a pitch for some quite serious money. And with that being pretty much the worst talk I’ve given for a long time, it’s made me realise the importance of preparation. Particularly when there’s time constraints. The simple fact was that with organising the event I just didn’t have time to learn or rehearse it. Oh, the irony….!

It’s particularly cringeworthy through the first handful of slides where I completely forgot what I was intending to talk about and I’m pretty incoherent. I make a little bit more sense in the middle, but all in all it’s pretty embarrassing. I just mainly tried to squeeze way too much in, simply because I hadn’t rehearsed it so had no idea how jumbled, rushed and incoherent it would sound.

I’ve thought long and hard about this, and I’ve decided to post it. I  think hopefully there’s some useful stuff in there for people to take home with them. And it’s an object lesson in what happens when you don’t prepare and you’re under time pressure. It’s clear from my gesture when I left the stage that I felt it was a garbled effort!

Nicked from Brian at Crimzn.com

We had our third Ignite Cardiff last night. It was great, I think. But I enjoyed it least out of all of them. We were in a different venue from normal (the utterly beautiful WMC), but it became pretty stressful because of a whole load of technical issues, all because of one unforeseen variable – we changed laptops at the last minute. For some reason Claire’s laptop didn’t work with the WMC’s screens and so we thought we’d transfer all the talks to my laptop and just use that. No problem, right?

Wrong.

I may be over-exaggerating a little, and I’m told that it seemed no big deal out in the crowd. But it certainly made our lives sweatier than they should have been! I’m sure there’s a bunch of lessons here about testing, being prepared, introducing variables at the last minute, but I just know that we’re using Claire’s laptop next time. I must add, though, that the WMC were amazing and helpful in trying to help us keep on top of our self-induced gremlins!

I also have to say that from the feedback, which I’ve been reading over a cuppa and with a big smile this morning, it seems like the speakers were really well received. And they were all brilliant. And Brian from Crimzn very kindly filmed them all so we should hopefully have them online sometime soon.

One of the points of my talk was that by publicly committing to doing things you are more likely to do them, and hopefully will learn something in the process. I learned that because you were so busy organising things, and therefore not actually having any time to learn or practice your talk, you don’t realise that you actually tried to cram too much in, so just it comes out as one incoherent, rambled mess! I hope some of my points came across in the process, anyway. But next time I won’t be speaking at one of my own events.

Next up, TEDxCardiff…

I’m putting together a presentation I’ll be doing in a few weeks time. It’s about time-management, simplifying your life, and achieving your goals. But far from being an instructional talk, it’s more about how I’m incredibly bad at most of these things, and how I have to trick myself into getting stuff done and striving for that ideal life. For example, I’m writing this while sat in a cafe that has no wifi. And I sought it out on purpose. And I’m doing that a few mornings a week now. I call it “blackspotting – the act of purposely seeking disconnected areas in order to get more work done” (mainly in a vague hope the phrase will catch on, it’ll become a trendy thing to do one day and I can pretend to be the inspirational founder of a global movement that someone actually thought of years before me).

The thing is, like many creative people, I’m quite easily distracted, and with email, web, twitter I’ll often find myself sitting down to do some work and find I “need” some information. I open up a browser, ask a question on Twitter, or search through my email archive. But I’ll get distracted by a shiny link to an interesting report/blog/site/whatever. And before I know it half an hour has passed and all I’ve been doing is browsing.

Anyway, that’s beside the point. I’m finding that with all the things I’m doing now, and the increased amount of time I’m spending on Dizzyjam (full launch any day now!) and various creative industries consultancy projects, I’m finding less time to spend on the things I love that I do for free. The case in point is Nocci. It is a success story, with events happening all over the UK, and has attracted a huge amount of attention. However, because it doesn’t generate any revenue (well, at least not at the moment), I can’t justify giving it the time and attention it deserves. People have told me it’s been incredibly valuable to them in terms of meeting new people, finding project & business partners, and generating thousands of pounds of income. And now I’m starting to get requests to run international events. It’s on the cusp of being a truly global network of events for people in the creative industries, all run by members in their own towns and cities. But despite being effectively run and operated purely by its members, it still takes time to administrate, upload pics of events to the site, keep the news pages up to date etc etc.

So, I’m thinking of how I can get more people involved to get it expanding at the rate it deserves to. Do I ask for volunteers? Do I give “ownership” of countries/territories to members that are pro-active there? Do I appoint a news editor; someone who can write an interesting and engaging news piece once or twice a week? Will people be willing to give up their time to be involved?

Or do I go down the hard, sweaty path of trying to attract (a relatively small amount of) funding – say £40,000 a year – to pay someone to work fulltime for Nocci and have a small budget to work with? And what about crowdfunding (anyone had any experience of Kickstarter.com)?

To bring it back to the beginning of this post, one of my tricks is to put stuff “out there” as a means of creating dialogue between friends, Twitter followers etc that will spur me into action. By publically committing to running Berlin Marathon before I’d even found out whether spaces were available i kind of had to do it! And so hopefully by writing this down and committing it to the ether, it will have a magical catalytic effect!

]]> http://neilcocker.com/2009/10/05/futureofnocci/feed/ 11 neilcocker Berlin U-Bahn http://neilcocker.com/2009/09/10/the-do-lectures-done-pt-4/ http://neilcocker.com/2009/09/10/the-do-lectures-done-pt-4/#comments Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:41:38 +0000 Neil Cocker http://neilcocker.wordpress.com/?p=196 ]]>

The first lecture of the last day was postponed half an hour. Because everyone was still in bed. At 3am the night before everyone had gone straight from the teepee where Katy Carr and Bass Clef performed so brilliantly, and walked the 30 or so metres to “the pub” (a tiny renovated cottage of sorts where they stocked loads of that gorgeous Pen Lon beer. And then Katy had brought out her ukelele and started singing sea shanties. It all gets a bit blurry from there on in…

Katy Carr performing in the teepee before Bass Clef tore it up with his sample-tastic dubstep.

Katy leading a sea shanty singalong at about 3am in “the pub”, with Duke Stump on my right, providing backing vocals….

When everyone did blearily emerge from under their canvas we were treated to a lively and funny talk from “El Gigante”, Ben Hammersley. Ben’s one of those blokes that seems to have done everything. He’s a war correspondent (great photos from Afghanistan), a consultant to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, editor-at-large of Wired UK, ultra-runner and a very nice guy too. And it’s difficult to hate him because he’s a lot bigger than everyone else in the room. Ben’s talk was about numbers and stats. But in a good way. He talked of making sure you’re measuring the right numbers when assessing the success of something and how, when put on a wall, numbers will always go up. <note to self – need a big wall graph of Dizzyjam sales>. I quizzed him afterwards on why Wired had decided to launch a UK magazine when publishing was in such a spiralling nose-dive at the moment. He believes it will work because it’s concentrating purely on being a magazine and nothing else. In other words, concentrate on the “it-ness” of whatever it is that you do, and do it to the best of your ability. But I’ve still yet to find out why he had an egg in his pocket…

Caroline and Helen

Alice Taylor from Channel 4 plays games. Lots and lots of games. She’s an uber gamegeek. But if anyone ever understands the corellation between games and education then it’s her. After a flash of neurochemical-biology (succeeding in tasks makes our brains reward us with dopamine) we were treated to advance previews of some of the brilliant educational games she’s working on for Channel 4. Excellent stuff!

Adam Lowry from from Method cleaning products took on the big boys with his environmentally friendly products. And before long they were copying him. One thing that everyone seemed to be in agreement with was that so many “eco” products had failed because they required to make a sacrifice. In other words, they were a bit rubbish at doing their job in comparison to the competition. Method aims to be the best, regardless of whether their products are “green” or not. I also love their attitude to resourcefulness (“because the little guy has to be more resourceful”), and their unofficial mantra – “What Would Macgyver Do?”

Andrew and Marcin

The last talk was delivered by Alastair Humphreys, a brilliantly energetic explorer who’d driven overnight after delivering a best-man speech to talk to us. He once cycled round the world – it took him 4 years. I hope he told his mum where he was going. He loves testing his own limits and says that “if you fail, at least you know what your limits are”. I loved his zest and energy for life, and the challenges and “micro-adventures” he sets himself (“find a daily dose of self-discipline”). He spoke of the joys of cold showers (erm….right…!) and that if you go to bed 10 minutes late and get up 10 minutes early every day, you earn yourself a whole extra 5 days a year, and a whole year over the course of your life.

I’ll leave the final word of the lectures that year to him:

“Set your goal. Then begin it”.

The thing that struck me most about the Do Lectures is that despite there being 20+ utterly brilliant and inspiring lectures over the course of 4 days, some of the best and most inspiring conversations were happening over the dinner table. Everyone there believed in doing something, and when you get 100 people like that together in a beautiful setting, things are bound to happen. The lectures themselves just acted as a catalyst.

Before dinner we had an hilarious axe auction, all donated by Gabriel, of course. Obviously everyone wanted an axe after his talk. They’re such beautifully crafted things. I live in a first floor flat near the centre of Cardiff, and I was desperately thinking of reasons to justify buying one! I was soon out of the bidding though, as prices went sky-high (all proceeds going to the Do Lectures), and impromptu auctioneer Oli Barrett kept the crowd laughing and cheering. He’s the one with the big cheesy grin in the pic below Then I finally got round to having a bushcraft lesson (or “getting my Mears on” as I preferred to call it) and attempted to make fire with Nick (MD of those delicious Teapigs teas). Despite a solid hour of what amounted to rubbing twigs together, and again dripping in sweat, it was not to be and we left the woods aching, sweaty and with our manhood very much under question. We took solace in the fact that nobody else had managed over the course of the weekend either.

From the top: Helen, me, Nick, Oli, Nigel, Mark & Simon

I left camp later that night to drive back through the wind and rain to Cardiff, leaving a lot of people loving the folk band who were playing in the canteen, knowing I would definitely be back next year. I could actually hear them as I walked down the long country road towards where my car was parked. And, at the risk of sounding pretentious again, I felt like there was an incredible energy coming from Fforest. A hub of inspiring people who want to go out and “Do”. People who want to change the world, all gathered for one brief glimmer of time in a magical setting. I just pray that we can take all that back to the real world….

The veranda at night

A few videos I took on my camera, just to get a feel for what went on while we were there…

The tent I shared with Nigel and Marcin, on the Fforest site, set in the beautiful countryside of west Wales.

Various discussions taking place.

Me. My boots. My tea.

So. It’s day 3. I wake up exhausted. It’s been pretty damn cold, the futon mattress in the tent is a little too thin to provide full protection to my delicate, over-privileged hips and shoulders, and the run last night had worn me out a bit. And i’m just emotionally exhausted from the sheer brilliance of everything I’ve had to take in. At the risk of sounding fluffy and pretentious, it’s a very nourishing experience, both in terms of body and brain. But there’s a part of me that wants a day of comfy sofas, take-aways, and trash telly. Weird, huh?

The feeling doesn’t last though because we’re whisked straight from breakfast into the first two lectures of the day. One on axes, and one on ornithology (or more specifically the testicle size of the aquatic warbler). Seriously.

And they are both brilliant. Utterly, utterly inspiring stuff to shake off the lethargy. Gabriel Branby, director of Gränsfors Bruks axe factory in Sweden, delivers a talk about stripping back the “bulk” of your product, and adding information. Remove all extraneous details and return it to its essence. He talks of the Tao (a favourite subject of mine), and the need for values in the company (“Write your values down!!”). After all “you can lower the price of an axe to zero, but it still won’t compete with a chainsaw”. In other words, make sure it is the best at being an axe, and not at being a thing that just chops down trees.

Ace volunteers Naomi, Ian and Charlotte

Tim Birkhead seems to have been kept awake all night by a rogue snorer in his tent. He couldn’t identify exactly who he was, which was probably a good thing given how close Gabriel’s box of axes was. However, he delivered a fascinating and hilarious talk about ornithology, the training of whistling bullfinches, the cultural significance and history of birds alongside humans, and how we HAVE to wake up at 4am next may to glory in the dawn chorus. Oh, and that thing about the aquatic warbler’s massive balls….

Rolf Potts touched on the subject of time as true wealth as well. He’s an advocate of vagabonding (a deliberate way of living that makes the freedom to travel possible). Being someone who intends taking some time out to travel extensively over the next few years, it was great to hear him advise us to slow down on our trips in order to experience more. Too many of us try to tick boxes (“seen that, seen that, seen that….”) and over-intellectualise our trips. Let the trip take you, not vice versa.

Alan Moore’s talk was great for anyone interested in technology, social media, the internet etc. I have pages of fascinating stats from his talk. Here’s a few:

• We are living in the very last days of industrial, mass media consumer society.
• This communications revolution will be as big as the one caused by the introduction of Gutenberg’s moveable type printing press.
• By 2012 twenty five percent of media will be “made by us” (according to Nokia research).
• Technology only succeeds if it truly meets human needs.
• Embed sociability into your tech for success.

Tom Taylor is the web’s equivalent of a garden shed tinkerer. He makes really cool stuff. He’s really into the concept of building on other people’s work, gluing it together in different ways. He spoke of how you can’t really go wrong if you’re delighting and inspiring. I just wish I was as clever as him!

Given the state of me when I woke up, I half expected to be asleep over dinner but first there was the small matter of taking part in “Paul Deegan’s Mini-Base Camp Clean-up”. In other words, Paul had found a load of junk just dumped in the forest near the site, and had asked for volunteers to join him in clearing it up. Along with Paul there was Emma (about to travel the world collecting stories of climate change), Gerald (anti-GM protester extraordinaire), Matthew a poet and Do Lectures founder member, Simon (who was filming the whole excursion as part of his DO documentary), and me.

I chose to do the bottom one, when the top one was the obvious choice. Doh!

Paul had delivered the first lecture on Thursday and had inspired me to pick up one piece of litter a day. As he sees it,a piece of litter on the floor is permission for other people to drop more. And so we set off to remove some permissions from the wood. We were regaled with great tales of mountaineering adventure (who ever knew that condoms could be so useful 8000m above sea level!), and started to enjoy the countryside as a woman went past with a pony and trap:

Nope, i didn't imagine it....

When we arrived at “ground zero” it had clearly been the site of lots of teenage partying. Beer cans, burnt wood, makeshift shelters, condom wrappers (bleurgh!) etc etc. Paul had neatly neglected to tell us there was a 3-man crew seat from a transit van that had somehow made its way there too. Once we’d collected all the rubbish into bin bags, we voted to take the seats back too, despite the tiny foot bridges, steep muddy climbs, and streams that needed to be crossed on our way back. Half an hour of blood, sweat and tears later and we’d got the massively heavy hulk of rubbish to the top of the site. But only after the guys behind me had decided to silently put the seat down without telling me, leaving me to drag it up a muddy cliff-face* on my own. I would have laughed with them if I had the breath….

I’ll save Gerald’s reputation (and the secrets of his clearly criminal genius) by not revealing how he hotwired a small tractor so we could borrow it and return victorious with the spoils of our labour, Paul and I riding treacherously on the seat balanced on the back of the mini-tractor.

Matt and the rubbish we brought back...

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that good about myself. Most human beings (myself very much included) are so driven by selfish ends it’s sometimes rare to do something that will hopefully benefit people you’ll never meet. It’s like the glow of giving big sums to charity. Or that could still just be the burning in my chest from the carrying of the seat.

It had been *another* amazing day. And despite all this, I still wasn’t dead on my feet. Well, I was. But i had to stay out on party night, right….?

* That statement might contain some mild exaggeration.

Typical iPhone evangelist, trying to convert a farmer to his cult!