Recessions are for wimps!!!

This is harsh! But I have a lot of sympathy with the sentiments having been through four recessions in the past. Now is the time to kick ass, including your own - I assume that is what Gaping Void intends.

Tough times for regional journalism

The picture above shows journalists from the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post – both based in Leeds, UK – striking over threatened redundancies.
This has been a common theme of the recession so far – the decline of regional journalism with swinging cuts from the South-West right up to Scotland. Now it has come to Yorkshire with 18 jobs up for the axe at Wellington Street. Full disclosure I used to work for Yorkshire Post and obviously my sympathies are with old colleagues.
Last year I took a phone call from an old newspaper colleague a couple of weeks ago. He wanted to know if I could help a former work mate find a job after being made redundant by a major regional newspaper publisher. I seem to be getting a lot of these calls recently
Since 1989, circulation is down 51% to 12,549 for the Birmingham Post; 49% to 70,028 for the Leicester Mercury; 43% to 50,256 for the Northern Echo (I used to work there); 62% to 32,874 for the Argus in Sussex; 38% to 38,844 for the Echo in Southend; 38% to 36,516 for the Herald in Plymouth; 49% to 20,976 for the Oldham Evening Chronicle; 46% to 19,956 for the Halifax Evening Courier. North, south, east, west, large, small, morning and evening, the story for Britain’s local papers is one of unremitting gloom.
Obviously, blogs, the internet, YouTube et al are having a huge impact on regional newspaper journalism and they are not going to go away. The main problem, certainly with the dailies, is that they are pretending to give local, regional and national news.
But parochialism is everything - and regional newspapers seem to have forgotten that. In my part of the world, what makes news in Bradford doesn’t make news in Leeds (ten miles distant).
Indeed, regionalism may have been deemed dead in some respects certainly at a local political level where people are not interested in what the councils of Hull, Leeds, Bradford or York have planned for their citizens. In spite of this I still love the Yorkshire Post and buy it every day. Similarly, as a resident of Barnard Castle I bought the Teesdale Mercury every week when I lived there.
Local is so important in regional newspapers. Back in the day when I was still a journalist - that meant covering the Women’s Institute meeting, the Parish Council and the local art competition. The idiocy of the current situation is that the more you cut the editorial resource the more you damage a newspaper’s ability to report local news.
Perhaps, we should launch our own web-based community funded newspaper for Yorkshire – now there’s a thought.

What I have been thinking this week

Total word of mouth

Sometimes, Andy Green tells me, we are faced with situations where a tenuous, fuzzy response – one that is deliberately vague – is the best strategy.
The recent response of a German Football league spokesperson is a delight to behold, a fantastic example of ‘tenuous talk’ at its best.
Just weeks after the revelation that Croatian footballer Dino Drpic had claimed to have had sex with his wife in the centre of his then team’s football pitch at Dynamo Zagreb’s (Metro Thursday February 12th) he suggested to his new Karlsruhe that he should wear the number 69 – apparently in homage to another of his passionate marital activities.
The German club’s marketing people rubbed their hands with glee only to be overruled by the League officials.
What do you say in response to a situation where you don’t want to focus on the direct innuendo, yet you have to justify your actions. Your comment must also have some form of coherence or validity.
“We asked the club to pick a lower number for the sake of clarity” was the wonderfully tenuous answer.
Can anyone out there beat that as a great response to a potentially embarrassing situation?

A few lessons from Obama

For anyone operating in the world of public relations or communications you could do worse than look at the principles behind Barak Obama’s campaign for the White House and how they can be applied to your own business…
1. Keep it simple and be consistent. Everything about the Obama campaign was big and yet simple. The big ideas addressed core issues that are crucial to the majority of Americans. They were communicated and addressed in a really simple way – consistency and simplicity ruled together for maximum effect.
2. Stay true to your message. Change was the one word that summarised the campaign and was referred to again and again. The prospect of moving away from a Republican government for the first time in eight years symbolised it all: change – that, in turn, led people to believe in change for the good. By simply staying true to the message, the campaign created a ground swell of opinion that it was change that was needed to win. Obama’s website is even called change.gov.
3. Stick to your objectives. Obama’s campaign was rigorously committed to its objectives and every aspect of activity was focused on achieving one, some or all of them simultaneously. Not only did it achieve the primary objective of getting people to vote for Obama, but the campaign also successfully achieved its fundraising objective - more than £500m dollars.
4. Get to the people that matter. At the heart of the campaign was a quest to embrace and train local people to build volunteer bases in different communities – this led to one of the biggest grassroots campaigns in the world today. Individual advocacy is the biggest driver of sales – turning one supporter into an advocate was worth at least 10 votes, as the results show.
5. Make people feel empowered and involved. This was the real secret of its success. Every single person involved at the grassroots was made to feel like he or she had a role to play. Whether participating in a rally, donating or training, the campaign ensured that voters became the most important participants and felt like their contributions really mattered. Every piece of communication was personally addressed to the recipient with a personal message of thanks from Obama.
6. Refine your data gathering and completion. Such was the scale of the compilation of data that the campaign’s different hits reached millions every time. A centralised online database meant every detail was recorded and allowed for easy cross-referencing of information and creation of lists to target specific groups, ensuring that the communication was right on target every time.
7. Embrace different media forms. The Washington Post described Obama as the “king of social networking”. During the general election 46 per cent of Americans used the internet, e-mail or text messaging to get information about the candidate compared with 29 per cent who watched network TV news and 34 per cent who read newspapers. As a result, online activity including videos, YouTube, myspace and FaceBook were used to maximum effect.
8. Getting the language right. Every element of the campaign used language that captured the audiences and had maximum impact – the choice of words and tone had to be in harmony with the campaign’s overall vision and messages. It was about using few words for maximum effect – Yes We Can, For the Change We Need...
9. Mass integration. Undoubtedly the mass integration of all forms of communications and data gathering are mutually beneficial components of a cohesive political operation. This was the key to the campaign’s overall success. It shows that consistency and a conjoined approach works. To say it broke new ground would be an understatement.
10. Protect your brand. It’s all very well building up a successful brand but it is as important to ensure that you maintain and protect it. With expectations now well and truly raised and that’s what all will be watching. Obama’s next challenge is to protect his reputation which will be another fascinating story to tell… I’m sure.

OpenCoffee in Bradford

Following the success of bmedi@’s previous OpenCoffee events, we are running another event on Thursday, February 19.
The emphasis of OpenCoffee is very much on the internet and new media industries. The free events are informal and see a range of technology entrepreneurs, designers, bloggers, developers, geeks, investors and anyone else who’s interested in digital media and technology exchanging ideas and striking up relationships that would otherwise never have flourished.
The philosophy of OpenCoffee is very much of an Open House of ideas and people.
OpenCoffee Bradford (Shipley), is being sponsored by the YoYo Bar & Restaurant as well as hosting the event here.
The event is open to anyone who is interested in the region’s digital, creative and new media industries. You’re welcome to enjoy the coffee, the cakes and the company. To book e-mail steve@bmedia.org.uk or register at Upcoming here.

Bradford Vets Winter Training from Ian Green on Vimeo.

This is me in the number three seat on the River Aire with the Bradford Amateur Rowing Club Veterans. This is not completely about vanity - I have just started using Vimeo and wanted to see if worked!

LaidOffCamp - WTF?

It says something about the times we are in - in San Francisco they are now running BarCamps for those cast out by the recession. Here's an email I just received:

'I'm organizing an event in San Francisco on March 3rd (and 8 other cities at later dates) called LaidOffCamp that is partially built from the BarCamp model. Each LaidOffCamp will be an unconference style event primarily for unemployed & self-employed people looking to share ideas about 1) starting a company 2) being a freelance consultant and 3) finding a job. I thought I would post this message in the BarCamp Google group not only because XXXX said it would be a good idea, but also because I wanted to invite the BarCamp community to come to any of the currently in-planning LaidOffCamps, make suggestions to the concept, or even bring a LaidOffCamp to their own city. Also, because there is a wealth of information on this group and on the BarCamp wiki that has been helpful to my planning, I want to say thank you to everyone here for being so open and allowing others to learn from each BarCamp experience.'

Good for them - using social media to sort out your circumstances!

Blinging up my business

Thoughts of an East Coast Liberal

Quite often people point at me and laugh because I blog and twitter and even engage with friends on Facebook or Linkedin.
Mainly, I suspect, their derision is based on the idea that the internet is a bad thing - a medium inferior to say, the novel or newspapers, where the traditional literary narrative. And by the way I am one of the most hungry consumers of books among my peers and currently have 15 books stacked at my bedside waiting to be read.
Given the wealth of information available in the web I am always stunned by the accusation that internet has cut our attention spans, dumbed us down and reduced the literary narrative to text-speak - LOL.
So I was cheered to come across Clay Shirky’s interview with the Columbia Journalism Review. Shirky, the author of Here Comes Everybody, is one of the brainiest people on the planet who deftly anwers the question - is the web shortening attention spans? Here it is:

You know, "Life was better when I was younger" is always an acceptable narrative. Right? And so for anybody who was brought up genuflecting to the literary culture and the virtues of reading Tolstoy - and essentially Tolstoy is a trope in these things, War and Peace is the longest novel in the sort of Euro-centric canon - you could always make the argument that the present is worse than the past by simply pointing to the virtues of the past. And so, what the Web does is that it does what all amateur increases do, which is it decreases the average quality of what’s available. It is exactly, precisely, the complaint made about the printing press. So, the only thing surprising about the Web, in a way, is that it’s been a long time since we’ve had a medium that increased the amount of production of written material this dramatically.
But people made the same complaint about comic books, they made the same complaint about paperbacks, and they made the same complaint about the vulgarity of the printing press. Whenever you let more people in, things get vulgar by definition. And people who benefited under the old system or who dislike or distrust vulgarity as a process always have room to complain. But, the interesting thing is, when you say so many people believe this, in fact almost no one believes this, right? There’s a tiny, tiny slice of the chattering classes for whom “Life was better when I was younger” is an acceptable complaint to make, and they have these little conferences or whatever and agree with one another about that phenomenon. But when you look at the actual use of the Web, it is through the roof. And it has continued in an unbroken growth from the early ’90s until now. So, in fact, almost everybody thinks it’s a good idea because they’re embracing it and they’re experimenting with it and they don’t really care what we think.
And when I say “we,” I mean—I am a member of the Chardonnay-swilling East Coast liberal media elite. But I also recognize that anything I might have to say about the utility of the media actually isn’t going to influence whether or not people are going to adopt this. And so once you get out of the idea that basically the previous avatars of the cultural good, and the world that George W.S. Trow chronicled so beautifully Within the Context of No Context—once you grasp that those people are powerless to that effect, powerless with regard to the adoption curve—the question really becomes, “How do you point out an effect where something has been damaged?” And that’s where I think a lot of this conversation about reading breaks down, because if you assume that reading Tolstoy is an a priori good, your world crumbled in 1970. And it’s hard to point to the Web as responsible for any of that because that was a done deal for some time.
If you want to point to more proximate harms, it would be very hard to argue, for example, that innovation, inventiveness, new intellectual discoveries had slowed as a result of the Internet, and so people are left with these kind of mealy-mouth cultural critiques, because nostalgia becomes the only bulwark against change. The actual effects of making more information available to more people have been enormously beneficial to society, yet not to the intellectual gatekeepers in the generation in which that change happened.

We're doing a BarCamp

Big call out! We - and that includes you - are planning BarCamp Bradford as the city's first 'unconference', a event where the participant who attend create the programme of sessions themselves. BarCamps are open, participatory, democratic, 'workshop' events; the organisers and sponsors simply provide wireless broadband, a venue, beverages and food! The attendees provide the content - and the buzz ;- )
An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is created and managed by the participants (generally day-by-day during the course of the event) rather than by one or more organizers in advance of the event on Saturday, April 18.
The term BarCamp is primarily used in the geek community. Open Space Technology is an energizing and emergent way to organize an agenda for a conference. Those coming to the event can post on the wiki here ahead of the events the topics they want to present about or hope others will present about. The wiki can also be used as an attendee list and to manage the organization of the event from food through to the provision of wifi etc.
We're anticipating sessions on social media; blogging; 3D printing; digital film making; Augmented Reality interfaces; Cloud Computing; mobile technology trends; Drupal, games design; co-creation; public relations and marketing in the digital age; an SEO clinic as well as talks from some of the big digital players of the North.
We'd love for you to come - if you're a creative; an artist; a writer; blogger; technologist or a developer; a geek; an entrepreneur; an academic researcher; gamer or investor please join us. If you're just curious and interested in digital culture - we'd love to meet you too!
Come and demo, talk, share or just hang out!
The event - which will be held at Shipley College - starts with an introduction by the organisers rearticulating the purpose of the event, the guidelines for conduct during the day, parameters and health and safety.
Parameters explain the start and end time of the event, duration of the sessions, breaks for food, how to access the network etc.
The Rules of Bar Camp?
Rule 1: You must talk about Bar Camp Bradford.
Rule 2: You must blog about Bar Camp Bradford.
Rule 3: If you want to present, you must write your topic and name in a presentation slot.
Rule 4: Only three word intros.
Rule 5: As many presentations at a time as facilities allow for.
Rule 6: No pre-scheduled presentations, no tourists - we might break this rule with a key note speaker
Rule 7: Presentations will go on as long as they have to or until they run into another presentation slot.
Rule 8: If this is your first time at BarCamp, you HAVE to present. (OK, you don't really HAVE to, but try to find someone to present with, or at least ask questions and be an interactive participant.)

Amid the gloom - look at the positive

Up here in Yorkshire thebusinessdesk - the leading online business news portal - has launched a campaign in favour of positive stories regarding business.
I like this a lot because even if your business is doing well it is easy to become obsessed by the Radio 4 Today Programmes' daily morning relish in all the economic awfulness and become full of self-doubt about your own business.
At GREEN we are doing very well at the moment thank you very much - eight new business propositions in the past two weeks at least, solid team of colleagues determined to do their best, and a clear vision for the business.
However, in the last two days two companies in our market have gone belly-up - Designers Republic (excellent Sheffield design agency) and TAS Communications (award winning PR agency in Beverley - 15 jobs lost. Very sad).
So big pat on the back to David Parkin - who had the balls to launch thebusinessdesk in the first place and leave the comfort of his position as business editor at the Yorkshire Post - for calling for positive business stories.
David says: "While not wishing to underestimate the impact of the current downturn and the effect it is having on company finances and jobs, our users are really keen for us to highlight some good business news to shine some light on what has become a relatively gloomy outlook for business.
"Our users have made the point to us that the national media are increasingly focused on the latest corporate victims of the downturn and rarely balance that with anything positive.
"We understand that despite the gloom there are some great businesses out there that deserve to have their stories highlighted. Our audience is made up of people in high level roles across the region and they understand that if we all just accept that the outlook is bad and getting worse then no business will look at opportunities to grow."
Companies we are currently working for - I can't disclose them here for obvious reasons - are doing incredibly well. They are expanding, spending money on our services, recruiting staff and, crucially, seeing opportunities in adversity.
Make no mistake the next six months are going to be shitty but I think a lot of the companies that go under have probably been basket cases for years. Indeed, I could never understand all the media fury about the administration of Woolworths - it should have gone under years ago. And, I suspect, a lot of crap will be washed out by the current recession and the good companies will emerge.
What do you think?

Twittering on again, but how do you use it?

At GREEN we tweet, I tweet here too and I’ve also recently set up a Twitter account for BarCamp Bradford. In fact I reckon I have been tweeting for three years now.
But the micro-blogging phenomenon that is Twitter – and I am not sure I like that definition (see Stephen Fry’s take on the issue of Twitter here) – is now entering mainstream with several companies, particularly media organisations now adopting it. There are now several BBC, FT and Channel 4 Tweets out there.
Now I can understand that as a lot of Twitters – wonderful isn’t it: a verb, noun, adjective and adverb – break news. Most notably at the Mumbai massacre and the Hudson River plane story.
And Twitter has already been adopted by some major companies such as General Motors, JetBlue and Whole Foods Market.
These and other companies are keeping close tabs on the 140-characters-or-fewer tweets which are rising up from among the millions of Twitter users. They are looking to connect with people who happen to mention their brands during the course of daily life.
In response to this over-powering twittering noise, companies are now seeking to strengthen their relationship with consumers who have positive things to say. They move even faster to address the concerns of disgruntled individuals before their ur-Tweets can taint the opinions of others sitting in the Twitter nest.
There is an excellent piece on Ragan about how companies should address the issues regarding corporate Twitter.
It offers three key rules for any company considering Twitter as a means of communicating with its social media audience. It’s not rocket science just good common sense and honesty. Here they are:
Be You - Twitter outreach—and really all social media efforts—should be an inside job. Companies should not rely on outside resources, such as PR firms (like GREEN), if they want their social media interactions with users to be authentic. Those who are knowledgeable about and authorized to speak for the organization and its products or services should be the ones doing the talking.
The point is how is a PR firm supposed to respond if they have to go back to the client and get the OK first? It is also important to have devoted inside resources prepared to interact with users in real time, which is the whole point of Twitter.
Be Open - There is nothing worse than sending someone a direct message on Twitter and then hearing nothing back. In short, if you don’t want to engage directly with users who would like to engage with you, then why bother being on Twitter or other social media outlets designed for person-to-person interaction?
Be Honest - It’s annoying when looking at a corporate Tweet to see no names or bios for those who are doing the twittering for the organisation. It’s the equivalent of waiting in a telephone queue while transacting with your bank. After all Twitter is all about having a conversation.
Finally if you want to find out what people are twittering about your organisation check out Filtrbox or Tweetdeck.

Beat Blue Monday is.. this Monday

Check it out, get involved and blog about it... What are you going to do about Blue Monday?

Stuff to do this year

New Year Resolutions:

1. Do more speaking gigs - at least six this year (two are already booked up). I am sure I get more out of the process than the delegates.
   
2. Listen more to clients rather than telling them what I think they should do. In other words - just shut up.
3. Do more writing - maybe even a book.
4. Make social media a reality in every PR campaign - subject to point 2.
5. Blog more than I have over the past few months - although I do write more here.
   
6. Encourage colleagues and others to see the potential of Web2.0
7. Maintain stable business. Keep staff. Keep Calm and Carry On.
8. Network more in the real world - at least one meeting a week.
   
9. Take one day off a week to do other stuff.
10. Stop making resolutions I cannot maintain - except the banjo, ukele and guitar.

Oh, and get out of bed at 6.30 every morning and eat breakfast. I hate breakfast.

This blog in Wordle

Oh Dear! What to do?

Celebrate Twixtmas

Over at GREEN we are working with five leading charities on a campaign to put a new name on the holiday calendar - 'Twixtmas' (December 27th -31st) - and transform the time between Christmas and New Year to encourage everyone to do at least five things to change their world.

The 'five days of Twixtmas', campaigners argue, is an ideal opportunity for the estimated 3 million people in the UK who will be on holiday throughout the period to overcome time poverty and do something positive instead of scoffing, shopping and slothing in these credit crunch times.

Getting behind the Twixtmas call are leading charities the Foundation for Peace, Global Action Plan, Jumble Aid, the National Autistic Society, and World Vision.

The Twixtmas campaign has been devised by Wakefield-based GREEN communications for its client, the Flexible Thinking Forum, a not-for-profit organisation promoting flexible and creative thinking skills in business and the community, encouraging people to challenge set ways of thinking.

Each of the five days of Twixtmas is themed to offer a way of making the most of each day where people are invited to celebrate themselves, do something unselfish by celebrating others, and do something for a friend, for the planet, or for their future.

To spread the Twixtmas cheer people are being encouraged to give their friends and family a ‘Twixtmas High Five’ hand greeting and share their Twixtmas pledge - the five things they are doing to change their world - to let them know about Twixtmas and what it stands for.

The campaign is also providing a range of valuable tips and advice from leading experts in personal development and well-being to help everyone make the most of the opportunity of the Twixtmas period on the campaign web site www.twixtmas.com. Visitors can also download their own Twixtmas Pledge form.

Commenting on the launch of Twixtmas, Andy Green of the Flexible Thinking Forum said: “Most of us live in abject poverty when it comes to a key part of modern day life – we are incredibly time poor.

“The time between the Christmas and New Year holiday is a fantastic opportunity to take the Twixtmas Pledge and do at least five things to change our world for the better covering the spectrum of caring for people, peace, poverty, passing things on, or the planet. Who knows, Twixtmas could become as recognized as the other festive holidays.”

For further details about the Twixtmas campaign visit www.twixtmas.com.

Happy Christmas everyone

The card above is believed to be one of the first mass-produced Christmas cards - dating back more than 160 years - and can be found among the extensive special collections of Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University's Perkins School of Theology.
The lithographed card caused a controversy in some quarters of Victorian English society when it was published in 1843 because it prominently features a child taking a sip from a glass of wine. Approximately 1,000 copies of the card were printed but only 10 have survived to modern times. Bridwell Library acquired its copy in 1982. The card was designed for Henry Cole by his friend, the English painter John Calcott Horsley (1808-1882). Cole wanted a ready-to-mail greeting card because he was too busy to engage in the normal custom of writing notes with Christmas and New Year's greetings to friends and family.
The card pre-dated color printing so it was hand-colored. The card is divided into three panels with the center panel depicting a family drinking wine at a celebration and the flanking panels illustrating charitable acts of feeding and clothing the poor.
Cole, who also wrote and published Christmas books, printed more cards than he needed so he sold the extra cards for one shilling each.
Widespread commercial printing of Christmas cards began in the 1860s, when a new process of color printing lowered the manufacturing cost and the price. Consequently, the custom of sending printed Christmas greetings spread throughout England.
Now we can just stick them on the internet… have a good Christmas.