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24.11.07

England's football and PR disaster

England's economy is likely to suffer losses of around £2bn after the football team failed to qualify for the finals of Euro 2008 and I am grateful to David Brain who snapped the above replica shirt in Piccadilly, London, the day after the dreadful result.
It is also a PR disaster which the FA obviously saw coming (surely?! Even if they didn't they should have planned for it) but failed to do anything about - the ramifications could run on for more than three years unless the appoint some top notch manager - God perhaps?
According to the British Retail Consortium, the retail figures for beer, flat-screen TVs and fast food during the tournament would typically be around £600m but that figure has been dismissed by experts who said a more realistic number would be £2bn.
Simon Chadwick, Professor of Sport Business Strategy and Marketing at Coventry Business School, told the Daily Mail that the probable loss is more than three times that figure: "Evidence from previous tournaments shows that worker productivity normally increases as the England national team progresses through major tournaments and the 'feel good factor' takes hold. A successful run to the 2008 finals would have led to a £2bn bonanza for the economy," he said.
Not one single country from the British Isles will be playing in next year's Euro football tournament and this is likely to have a knock-on effect on the rest of the economy.
My advice to the FA and all the other UK teams as well as the Republic of Ireland is to resurrect the Home Championships - my only worry is that England will probably lose that to. My money would be on Northern Ireland or Scotland.

18.11.07

Great day at BarCampLeeds


I could write at length about BarCampLeeds. It was brilliant! Not too techie. Not too preachie. And attended by really good people. GREEN was pleased to be associated with the event and will be involved in the next Northern BarCamp. Well done to Imran Ali.
Check out the pictures here.

Good luck to Parky and TheBusinessDesk

Well then - good luck to David Parkin, former Business Editor of the Yorkshire Post on the launch of his new venture TheBusinessDesk.com.

We have known David for more years than he cares to remember. He is a talented journalist and commentator with a canny knack of understanding what the Yorkshire region and its business community is interested in. TheBusinessDesk is still very much a Alpha business, given that it is all produced online but if David can get the right handle on the business he will do well.

It will be interesting to see how he adopts new social media tools into the site. At present there is nothing for Digg, Technorati or Del.icoi.us to excite the hardened social media junkie but I am sure that will come.

So good luck to Parky - he launches TheBusinessDesk on 19.11.07.

16.11.07

...and so to BarCamp Leeds

BarCamp Leeds is the city’s first ‘unconference’, a event where the folks that attend create the programme of sessions themselves. And it takes place tomorrow at 9.30 at the BBC’s old regional HQ, now owned by Leeds Met.
GREEN is one of several sponsors involved in the event which is an open, participatory, democratic series of ‘workshop’ at which the organisers and sponsors simply provide wireless broadband, a venue, beverages and food! The attendees provide the content - and the buzz :-). But due respect to Imran Ali for pulling it together.
We’re anticipating sessions on social media, blogging, 3D printing, Augmented Reality interfaces, mobile technology trends, Drupal, games design, co-creation, PR in the digital age, an SEO clinic as well as talks from the founders of BT Bizbox, Plusnet and eDocr.
There’ll also be a great opportunity to network - we’re hoping our Nintendo Wiis will break the ice and Leeds Met’s Old Broadcasting House will provide a fun and inspiring venue.
Come and demo, talk, share or just hang out! Topics that might be tackled tomorrow include:

  • Intelligent human-computer interfaces and their possibilities - Reinhold Behringer
  • rom start-up to £67m in 10 years - passing on the wisdom and hopefully not the pain) - Lee Strafford
  • From startup to £45m in 8 years (Learn from my mistakes) or Launching BT BizBox a small business CRM solution in 5 weeks - Dean Sadler
  • SEO Site Clinic - - Dominic Hodgson and Others
  • Ladybank Company of Distillers - building a real co-creation business through the internet - Ian Green
  • Unleashing social media and technology for the good of local communities - Stuart Bruce
  • From Zero to Game in 30 Minutes - Tom Scott
  • From a Mobile Telephone to a Computer - a Reality Dysfunction Ian Hay
  • Why Wikis suck for post production environment? Capturing the essence of document interactivity - a paradigm shift Manoj Ranaweera - reference
  • Drupal - Isriya Paireepairit
  • Conquering Time and Space - A survivors guide to distributed dev team management - Ian Pringle
  • ePaper? ShmePaper! - (how almost buying an ebook reader made me realise how cool the technology of books is) - 5m40s micropresentation, Guy Dickinson
  • LiveCoding: Introduction to Ruby & TextMate - Caius Durling
  • How technology can drive regeneration in Northern Cities - Inventya, Valerie De Leonibus
  • One of three talks that you can choose from now, Paul Robinson
  • Dude! Where’s my hash? - a frank look at OS X after jumping from Windows and my experiences of the past 6 months - Dan Hardiker
  • Mind over Matter - How to take control of your state of mind, and of others - Dan Hardiker
  • Feed Mailer - (A little demo of Feed Mailer and a round up of the upcoming features) - John Slater & Chris Richardson (This is not 100% confirmed)

13.11.07

Las Vegas and BlogWorldExpo

Sigh! Las Vegas is a very strange place. I am home (in the UK, Yorkshire, Ilkley) by the way after 18 hours via Atlanta. It is cold and raining now but just one day away I was at BlogWorldExpo. By the way the picture shows (left to right) Drew the US Ambassador for FuelMyBlog (FMB) Kevin, me and Marcus.
But Las Vegas is weird. After a couple of days in a conference discussing the development of Facebook and which way Google is going to go. After discussing how best to use social media to help big corps get into the zeitgest that is Web2.0 and talking about mobile blogging, Java programming and how to "join in the conversation" - it was always refreshing to walk out of the LV Convention Centre to be confronted with a buy-one get-one free offer for hookers.
I mean this is a weird town!
Meanwhile, I look like a Cicada beetle - everywhere is air conditioned, which dries you out and when you go outside - in the desert - it dries you out. Taking my clothes off at night I felt like a snake slothing its skin.
Anyway - back to BlogWorldExpo. It was very good but I didn't blog about it when we were there because we had Drew covering this area. Drew is a top man and hopefully caught what was going on.
Myself and Kevin were too busy joining in the conversation on behalf of FMB and spreading the word of European blogging to do much else.
For myself I will write about the following great people I met over during my time in Las Vegas. They are:
Matt Colebourne
Ann Manby
Jim Kukral
Michael Bayer
Voxant
Aaron Zaviles
and
Chitika

Also check out Kevin Dixie and "BenSpark" for a bit of balance on our time in Nevada.
Anyway, keep an eye here and see what I have to say.

GREEN win gold hatrick in awards

Congratulations to the GREEN team for their recent success in the annual public relations awards run by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.
Unfortunately I was abroad in the US at BlogWorldExpo doing some networking and research on social media and missed the event at the Queens Hotel in Leeds. I understand the team had a great time and that perhaps some wine was taken. You can make your own decision based on the picture (left to right) Kathy, Leander, Emma, Simon and Liz. Joe is hiding but I think you can see one eye. Anyway, here are the scores on the doors.

Category 1 - Corporate Communications
Gold - Green Communications, Wensleydale Creamery.

Category 2 - Not-for-Profit
Gold – Green, Beat Blue Monday

Category 8 - Low Budget
Gold – Green, Beat Blue Monday

Category 10 - Best Use of Media Relations
Finalist - Green Communications, Beat Blue Monday.

Category 13 - Best Use of New Media
Finalist - Green Communications, Wensleydaleblog.
Finalist - Green Communications, Beat Blue Monday.

Category 14 - Best Use of Photography or Design
Finalist - Green Communications, Wakefield Cultural Partnership.

Category 18 - Best Website
Finalist - Green Communications, Thinking, Doing, Sharing - www.urbanmines.org.uk.

Category 22 - Outstanding Public Relations Consultancy
Finalist - Green Communications, Green Communications