25 Mar
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! 
23 Mar
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.
While oil is undeniably vital to our world, the untapped creativity in this region represents a resource infinitely more precious. In this bright new century, the most advanced societies will be those that are most creative. Creativity is a resource that excites the imagination … expands jobs and opportunity … and improves our quality of life. It is clean, and it is high-value. Most of all, because it is rooted in the human mind, creativity is the one economic resource that is truly inexhaustible.
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.
9 Mar
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.
24 Feb
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.
21 Feb
A recent tweet by me sparked a conversation on Twitter between me and 3 fellow Do Lectures attendees, @lpostlethwaite, @tot_baker, @iamcreative. And it got me thinking.
As a huge generalisation, creativity doesn’t often go hand in hand with organisation. And so while we have brilliant ideas, our poor time management and ever-expanding to-do list tends to stifle our ability to fulfill our creativity. But we also rarely have the means to be able to afford a personal assistant to keep us on track and help us with those thousands of little things that get in the way of just being, erm, creative.
I know there are lots of virtual PA services out there, but I’ve never heard of anyone using one, and I think the concept of a disembodied person helping you out is both limited and not particularly appealing.
But what about a shared, real-life PA for creatives? Surely there would be handfuls of potential people interested in having help for between a few hours and a few days a week?
Would the PA be able to find, say, five different clients, all of whom would be willing to pay £10 an hour each (so he/she could dedicate a day a week to each)?
Or would it be more feasible to just pay someone for half a day’s work a week (e.g. £40). In those four hours, I’m sure someone super efficient could mop up all the admin bits and pieces that sit on my desk for weeks at a time. It’s just whether it would be worth £160 a month to have someone do this.
Would it free me up to be more creative, and therefore more profitable? I suppose this is the eternal point of PAs, book-keepers, administrators etc. They’re there to enable you to spend more time doing what you excel at (and hopefully what you enjoy).
Or would the switching between 5/10/20 clients a week make it very difficult for the shared PA to stay on top of everything?
What do you think…..?
17 Feb
I got an email from the most talented man I know, and one of my best ever friends. He felt the following was too good to not share. I feel the same:
Read this as part of my Jung research this morning, too inspiring to keep to myself:
“No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you.” – old alchemist to disciple.
Apparently Carl Jung once wrote it in a letter to a discouraged correspondent.
Brilliant.
13 Feb
I suppose I could be described as a romantic, but I do think that Valentine’s Day is a little pre-packaged and a good excuse for a lot of people to make a lot of money. And it’s a shame that sometimes we need to be reminded to say those three little words, or to do things that demonstrate those three little words for us.
Having said all that, I’ve really enjoyed the brilliant Hugh Macleod‘s recent series of love-themed cartoons. And I’m posting my favourites here especially for my valentine, Jo, who’s been a constant source of reasons to smile. Particularly over the last few months, which have been very hard work, and emotionally draining.
As her famous cousin once wrote, all you need is love.
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And here’s my favourite, and most relevant….
19 Jan
Today’s unignorable lesson comes from the brilliant Hugh at Gaping Void. How you define what matters is up to you…
27 Dec
Earlier this year I bought a Nintendo Wii. I hadn’t bought a games console for ten or fifteen years but I’d played with one a few times at friends’ houses and they seemed like a sociable and fun way of passing the time. So on a whim I picked a second hand one up off eBay, making sure to get one with the balance board so I could kid myself that I’d wake up every morning and do an hour’s yoga on it…
Anyway, I’ve been really getting into Wii Sports Tennis of late. It’s a lot more sophisticated than I first realised and I’ve enjoyed learning to play the different shots and seeing my steady rise through the ranks.
There are several training options with the tennis and I found myself testing myself on my ability to time my swing. This is done by returning the ball, with the added difficulty of hitting a moving, and shrinking, target at the far end.
Here’s a video of someone doing that training…
I'd been getting increasingly frustrated with my inability to improve my meagre high score. And then I realised that on returning a ball into one of the corners I was often distracted by watching to see if it hit the target at the far end, when i should have been concentrating on the next ball that was already whizzing its way in my direction. Once I'd hit the ball there was absolutely nothing i could do to improve its chances of ending up in the right spot, so I told myself to ignore everything except the ball coming towards me. A simple enough feat, but I instantly started to improve.
Lesson No.1 - Once you've made a change to your business, concentrate on what's next. Obviously if you've added a new product to your range, or you've decided to treat your customers in a different way, then this all needs monitoring. But don't let that distract you from moving things forward. Don't get hung up on what you did yesterday. Surely what you do tomorrow is more important...?
As you can see from the video the target area moves from side to side. I was attempting to hit the middle of the target each time, meaning I was introducing small variations to my strokes in order to "centralise" each shot. Then it dawned on me that no matter how much it moved from side to side some part of the target area covered the very centre of the court for the vast majority of the early stages of the training. So if I concentrated on maintaining a simple, metronomic swing straight back at the server it would hit the target every time. So, instead of trying to alter my swing for each shot, I did the same thing every time. And it was good enough.
Lesson No.2 - Are you over-complicating your service, trying to modify it for each customer/order/request? Is there one simple action that you can do that will allow you to hit your targets every (or nearly every) time? There's parallels with the Pareto Principle, the Abraham Lincoln mis-quote "you can't please all of the people all of the time", and Ben Hammersley's talking at the Do Lectures about measuring the right thing. In other words, you can achieve a lot more by doing a lot less.
So, next time you feel guilty for playing computer games, just tell yourself you're doing a mini-MBA....
10 Dec
They’re obviously working so hard on their startups they don’t have time for vocal coaching!
Congratulations to everyone involved. They may not be the most brilliant vocalists, but you have to respect the hard work for getting to where they are now!
