Damned United at the Art of Propaganda

Through sister company, Art Of Propaganda, GREEN is hosting a special exhibition based on the Damned United by local author David Peace - a fictional account based on the 44 day reign of mercurial football manager Brian Clough at Leeds United, back in 1974.
The exhibition is richly illustrated with the photo archive of local freelance press photographer David Hickes who chronicled the period for leading newspapers.
The event was timed to commemorate the anniversary of Brian Clough's birthday, on March 21 and runs until the end of the football season. The display also marks a personal interest for local MP, Ed Balls, a keen football fan, who gave an introduction to the show.
David Pearce is already recognised as one of the UK’s top creative writing talents - he is the author of The Red Riding Quartet and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel GB84 in 2004. David Peace currently lives in Tokyo, Japan, with his wife and two children.
His latest work, The Damned United is an extraordinarily inventive novel shifting between and across twelve years and 44 days in the life of Brian Clough, telling the story of a world characterized by a fear of failure and a hunger for success.
The book is a portrait of one of the most idiosyncratic Englishmen of the last century and is a story about power and paranoia coming together to shape a people and their times.

What's all this Twittering?

Everyone seems to have gone Twitter mad at the moment. I could write about it at length but better people have been there before me.
If I can count one benefit it is that Kevin Dixie and myself have been having ad hoc board meetings through Twitter about Fuelmyblog. This is good because Kevin is based in La Rochelle, France and I am in Ilkley, UK.
I can best sum up Twitter as blog-lite but everyone joins the conversation at the same time. For more stuff on Twitter visit:

Simon Collister – Twittering Point
Drew B – On Brit Twits
Hitwise – Twit Stats
Ian Delaney – Twitter Debate
Steve Rubel – From Blog to Twit

So what do you think? Are you a Twit.

Blown away...

The government has won Commons support for plans to renew the UK's nuclear submarine system, despite a large rebellion by Labour MPs. I'm not sure how I feel about this as an Old Leftie.
Tony Blair had said it was "essential" the UK began the £20bn plan to renew Trident as soon as possible. After six hours of debate, 409 MPs supported the proposals, and 161 were against - a majority of 248 and 413 MPs had rejected a bid to delay the decision, with 95 Labour rebels among 167 MPs wanting a delay.
As a child of the Sixties I grew up with the Bomb at the back of my mind all the time - and like many born then used to have nightmares about it. I joined CND, got the T-shirt and the badges, did the marches, even went to Greenham Common. And then the Berlin Wall fell... So we can all relax. Yes? No.
Does the UK need Trident? I don't think so but the world is so f*cked up you do wonder whether we need a reply to North Korea (given up on WMDs) and Iran (trying to develop an industrial Uranium refinery)or any other nutty nation (the US?) but it all seems like a bit of Mexican Standoff - and that's f*cked too.
According to the BBC between £15bn and £20bn would be spent on new submarines to carry the Trident missiles and the fleet would take 17 years to develop and build, and would then last until about 2050 by which time my son will have to figure it out.
In fact I think the current generation is more conservative than mine - despite all the media hype about teenager degenerates - and might welcome the UK Government's stance. Shit! I've not spoken to my son Frank about this yet... so who knows?
Defence minister Adam Ingram, speaking after the vote, said he had heard some "disgraceful" speeches from Labour rebels, but it had been a "strong and healthy" debate.
Thank God for rebels I say. Altogether now:

And it's one, two, three
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Birmingham.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

Bet that takes you back - I sang this in a band back in the late 70s.

We are recruiting

Over at GREEN we have witnessed some significant new business wins - will tell you more later - and as a result we are now looking for a graduate trainee and talented account managers and executives.
We've had a great start to the year and will be looking to recruit some new people over the next three months.
We're looking for self-starters with ambitions to join a fast-growing agency offering a wide range of communications services. Check out our blog and our Little Book of Values - and if you think we are the kind of company you would like to work for drop us a line to ian [at] greencomms [dot] com

Iraq sucks but a bow helps

Books and stuff

Further to my earlier post about Amazing Grace we have just got back from a shopping trip in Leeds - ostensibly to buy some new clothes and shoes for the kids.
We also had lunch at the excellent Lucky Dragon Chinese restaurant which is so good it doesn't even bother with a website - it's on Templar Lane if you're interested and, if you go, ask to order off the Chinese menu.
The worst thing I can do on a family shopping trip is to say I'm off to Borders while the rest of them go fashion hunting in the mean streets of Leeds, West Yorkshire. Although to be fair, my son Frank hung out with me reading Manga and other teenage stuff in Borders while I went foraging.
Why "the worst thing I can do?", because I always end up spending too much. I went with the intention of buying one book on William Pitt The Younger. I now have seven plus a CD.
I am 50 quid bloke! This is a phenomenon that you guys in the US may not be familiar with so check the link.
So what did I buy?
For me:
CD: My Name Is Buddy - Ry Cooder (brilliant - listened to it on the way back in the car. And no complaints from the kids, perhaps because Buddy is a cat.)
Book1: William Pitt, The Younger by William Hague
Book 2: Agincourt by Juliet Barker
Book 3: Unimagined by Imran Ahmad
Book 4: Small is Beautiful by EF Shumacher
Book 5: Imperium by Robert Harris

For my sister, whose birthday is imminent:
Book 1: POSH by Michael Quinion
Book 2: Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson

Confession - this is the one retail thing I do really well and never feel guilty about: buying and reading books and listening to good music. Clothes and stuff is just a bore but books and music - bring it on. And my wife has just reminded me we have to do a grocery shop for tomorrow... sigh!
What books are you reading at the moment? - let me know.

How do you define your self?

After a day buying some books I've been meaning to get for ages - one a novel, one a memoir, two on history and one on economics (Small is Beautiful by Shumacher) I've been looking at Fuelmyblog and the various categories we have.
They are Entertainment, Arts/Literature, News/Politics, Business/Technology, Personal/Lifestyle and Sports/Leisure.
After some very unscientific analysis - and I suppose that Kevin can give a proper breakdown - this is what the FMB community is blogging about:

1. Personal - 50%
2. Business/Technology - 25%
3. Entertainment - 10%
4. News/Politics - 5%
4. Arts/Literature - 5%
4. Sports/Leisure - 5%

Are we being too narrow in our definitions? Should we have a section on Peruvian Nose Flutes for example? I don't know what do you think?

Amazing Grace - UK Premiere

For some reason I can't fathom we received an invitation to see the UK premiere of Amazing Grace at the National Media Museum in Bradford.
It was a black tie event and a bit swanky for Bradford. Also in attendance was the director Michael Apted and actor Ben Cumberbatch who took some questions from the Bradford International Film Festival's Artistic Director Tony Earnshaw, an old colleague of mine from the Yorkshire Post.
It was a good film but not a great one. The story of William Wilberforce's fight for the abolition of the slave trade begins inEngland, 1797. Exhausted by his crusading campaign to bring an end to the British Empire’s tradition of slavery, the young MP William Wilberforce retreats to his friends’ home to recuperate from an annual defeat to have his bill adopted into the constitution.
History shows that Wilberforce returned to the fray and, with a combination of obsession and evangelical zeal, raised sufficient support to eventually win the day. That he was unorthodox cannot be denied: he was a God-fearing radical, an idealist and a humanitarian in a world of state sanctioned cruelty.
That alone made him a figure of ridicule; his pursuit of an end to the trade of human beings as commerce made him a pariah... and a hero.
What intrigued me most was Cumberbatch's performance as Prime Minister William Pitt - the consumate politician who was capable of bending his principles to the direction of prevailing political wind but always winning out in the end. Remember this was the man who beat Napoleon.
Given the current state of affairs in the UK and the world - it was easy to draw parallels with Tony Blair, but I am not sure this is what the writers intended.
Any way that impressed me enough to go out later today and buy William Hague's book on Pitt.

Fuelmyblog rocks!!

We've just re-launched fuelmyblog and I think it rocks! But I would say that given my interest in the venture. What do you think? Add your own blog to see how it fairs in the voting system.
Fuelmyblog was established by Kevin Dixie as a labour of love, which has slowly evolved into a compelling Web2.0 proposition and we are planning to add lots of social media tools over the next couple of months. So keep coming back.
While I have played my part in the development of FMB all the credit for the new website goes to Marcus Dyson and his company eleventeenth which worked on the platform supporting the new site as well as the design. Well done Marcus!
New feature include being able to vote blogs up and down the rankings - votes based on quality rather than tags or links.
Other features will include blogradio interviews with FMB members, vidoes, forums and much much more - all will be on stream in the next couple of months.
What really freaks me out is that we only started talking seriously about this in January and look where we are now. All comments welcome.

From the ever informative, insightful and entertaining Gaping Void. With Hugh's blessing I will re-publish his entire thesis in due course. But the above is something to think on over the next couple of days. Where are you in this? ;-)

I don't need a Second Life

I’ve had an account with Second Life for about five months – and I’ve just closed it down.
At first I thought it was the way we had to go commercially as it, supposedly, gave you access to a range of interesting, intellectual thinkers who you could do business with and were willing to engage in the conversation.
It was also a platform to promote yourself or business – see Nissan, GM, Crayon etc.
I have visited it occasionally since I set up the account and each time I always felt like the only teetotaller at a party full of drunken teenagers. I’ve been invited to online orgies, air f**king parties (for God’s sake!), a Goth Vampire Happening, Heavy Metal Concert and other nonsense.
And remember I saw Motorhead at the Liverpool Empire in 1979 in Real Life and got a bollocking off my mother at the time.
Now, I am a real fan of Web2.0 and social media but God give me strength. Second Life is a complete bullshit fest and all those companies jumping onto the bandwagon are, I think, being fed a lot of ill-advised marketing nonsense by their advisers.
Stay away I say. Unless your market audience is priapic teenagers (male and female) who think it is cool to present them selves in SL as a Racoon, an extra from the film Alien, or an M&M sweetie forget it.
Maybe I am getting old, but last time I was in SL it was a bit like being in a nightclub with the Yoof and frankly I felt a bit seedy and voyeuristic. Last time I went to club in Real Life I had a suit on and looked like an off-duty police officer. Naturally, I made my excuses and left.
Real Life is good - it's what you do with it...

Fuelmyblog gets better and better

It's funny how Web2.0 brings people together even if they only live up the road from you.
Last week I visited the excellent fuelmyblog site established by Kevin Dixie to check out the Blog of the Day, which turned out to be Absoluteblog by Tom Eccles, a 16-year-old friend of my son Frank, who lives in the same village as us in Yorkshire. How bizarre is that?
Moreover, Tom was blogging about a visit he, Frank and some friends had made to London to spend a day at ThreeSpeech house courtesy of Sony Playstation.
Back to fuelmyblog - I have to disclose now that I have an interest in the site - it's looking very clunky at the moment but has still managed to attract a significant number of users from across the world, the bulk of them from the US.
However, thanks to the services of Marcus Dyson and his company eleventeenth we shall shortly be re-launching the site with some fantastic Web2.0 based tools enabling more bloggers to join in the fuelmyblog conversation. New feature will include being able to vote blogs up and down the rankings - votes based on quality rather than tags or links.
Other features will include blogradio interviews with FMB members, vidoes, forums and much much more - all will be on stream in the next couple of months. We even have a cool new logo and icon!
While, Kevin is based in France this is very much a British venture so I was heartened to read the Online and World-Beating feature in the Observer today by David Smith who makes the point that you don't have to be in Silicon Valley to come up with a good idea and make it work.
Smith makes the point that London is now the creative hub of the internet in Europe.
I would challenge that as I think that while we are two years behind the US in Web2.0 we are also about two years behind some European countries, particularly France and the Scandinavian countries.
What do you think?
Anyway keep checking FMB for further developments - all feed back welcome.

Pucker up for Valentine's Day

In the spirit of St Valentine’s Day I thought I would post this. I came across this on WikiHow – which I keep on my GoogleFeeds as a curiosity. It’s all about how to French kiss – and I’m not sure why France gets the credit.
I learnt how to do it behind the bike sheds at Bridgefield Comprehensive in Liverpool, refined it in the Sixth Form at the Grange School and finally perfected it at the University of Leeds when I was at my most priapic and met my wife who was very understanding.
By the way there is always the Liverpool Kiss – which Glasgow pinched off us – which is rather more demonstrative and has nothing to do with body fluids unless you count the blood dripping from your nose.
Anyway for all young and old lovers out there here’s a How To Top Ten Tips on the French Kiss:

1. Freshen your breath. You never want to have bad breath when you are about to kiss someone, whether the kiss is a French kiss or not. Because your mouth will be open in a French kiss, fresh breath is especially important. Practice good dental hygiene. Carry mints with you if you think there is even so much as a hint of a chance you might kiss. Avoid foods that leave an unpleasant aftertaste or residue, particularly garlic, onions, milk, and corn.
2. Moisten your lips. Dry lips do not move well together, but you do not want them to be dripping wet either. Just a light brush of your tongue over your lips will be sufficient to moisten them. A little bit of lip balm can help, too, but be warned, lipstick can be awfully messy so blot before you kiss.
3. Angle your head. If your mouths meet dead-on, your noses will get in the way, and you will not be able to kiss deeply or smoothly. To avoid this, tilt your head slightly to one side. Make sure you do not both tilt your heads to the same side.
4. Close your eyes. As you approach for the kiss, look into your partner's eyes, but, once you are close to theirs, close your eyes. It can be a bit of a turnoff to be kissing and going cross-eyed .
5. Start with a gentle and soft closed-mouth kiss. The French kiss is an open-mouth kiss, but do not lunge in with your lips agape like you're going to eat them; instead, open your lips very slowly. If you were learning to speak French, you would probably start with the basics, vocabulary and grammar, before trying to write poetry. Well, the French kiss is like the poetry of kissing, and before you can be good at it, you have to master the closed-mouth kiss. Even after you have added French kissing to your romantic repertoire, it is usually better to start a kiss with closed lips.
6. Go Dutch on the decision to French. Kissing should be a shared decision. You need to have permission to French kiss someone, but when your lips are locked with your theirs you may want to stop and ask, "Hey, this is great, but can I put my tongue in your mouth?" If that doesn't work out, open your lips slowly and just a little during the kiss so that one of your lips is sandwiched between theirs and one of theirs is between yours. As you are locking and re-locking lips, brush your tongue against your partner's lips ever so slightly. This should make it clear that you want to French kiss. If your partner's tongue does not respond in like fashion or if they pull away, you will have to save the French kiss for another time when you are both ready.
7. Explore with your tongue. If you and your partner seem to be enjoying the open-mouth kiss, slowly try to open your mouth a little bit more and gently push your tongue a little farther into their mouth. The tongue is very sensitive, and the mere act of touching your partner's tongue with your own will be very pleasant and stimulating for each of you. Do not stick your tongue too far into the mouth, as this can be a big turn-off. Instead, just gently and playfully touch tongues.
8. Mix it up. Kisses are like snowflakes: no two are exactly the same. Once you finally feel comfortable French kissing someone, it is tempting to try to do the same thing every time. Add variety. Sometimes kiss deeper, for example, and other times pay more attention to the lips than the tongue. Hold the kiss longer or shorter and explore the art of kissing. When something feels good for each of you, do not abandon it for the sake of variety.
9. Read Body Language. Everybody kisses a little differently, and each person enjoys different things in a kiss - there is no "right" way to kiss. What separates good kissers from bad is an ability to read a partner's body language and be responsive to their partner. Of course if your partner pulls away or seems uncomfortable at any time, understand that you have to slow it down. Listen for cues that tell how much your partner is enjoying a particular kissing maneuver. If you hear a sigh or moan, or they begin kissing you back with increased intensity, realize that they are responding with fervor.
10. Develop your style. Good French kissing, like good kissing of any kind, requires practice. You will get better as you do it more. In addition, the more practice you have with one person, the more comfortable you will feel kissing them and developing a style that suits both of you.

Finally remember to breath. Curiously I am on my own tonight as the missus is up in North Yorkshire with dear old pals.

Is it just me or...

Is it just me or are people posting comments less on their sites? Having done a quick trawl on my blog roll it seems that a lot of my favourite bloggers aren't blogging as much as they used to. Why?
I have to hold my hand up as one of the guilty - as my own posts have fallen recently. Not because I have not had anything interesting to say (mea culpa) and - indeed I do keep a list of things I feel I should write about whether it be about journalism, PR and Web2.0 or the fact I couldn't row at the South Yorkshire Head at the weekend because of the weather - but simply because I have been too busy trying to put food in the mouths of those that depend on me. Family first of course.
When I first started this site in 2006 I wanted to become a small voice in part of a bigger conversation - but the chat seems to have diminished this year and even some of the most prolific bloggers I followed have grown more and more remote - why is this?
Have we grown tied of the medium? - I hope not. Or have we run out of things to say? - again I hope not.
I suspect many of us are caught up in the mundane and the choice between writing something challenging or having a glass of wine and a pizza have become an easier decision to make.
My business at GREEN has never been busier but I do think it is important that I continue this pursuit - not because of what I write or what you write which can be very solopistic - but because what I learn and the people I meet online either through Green Gathering, greenblog or sites like MyBlogLog, FuelMyBlog or Spicey.
Blimey - how's that for a confessional.
One word of advice - if you blog don't stop now because the conversation has only just begun.

Check out Fuelmyblog

Well it works for me. Checkout the fuelmyblog video too...
This is good for bringing bloggers together and getting them to speak to each other.

Should I get a life?

It’s gone 10.20 in the evening and I am thinking of bed. And yet I am writing my blog – why?
God only knows. I’ve nothing to say right now – it’s been a dull day at the office putting together new business pitches and talking with a potential client/investment opportunity in France. And dealing with a client who has a killer preventative measure for H5N1, MRSA et al who the Press prefer to ignore – “Oh, another one?” they ask.
I had a couple of pints at lunch time with the political columnist of a national newspaper about doing an exhibition on the novelist George Gissing – see New Grub Street - to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his birth (he was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire by the way, where my company has an office).
But here I am recounting the minutia of my day (not something I usually do on Green Gathering) to fill the space.
Why?
Well, like starting a diary, once you start you shouldn’t stop. Also, I suspect I was a bit annoyed by Jeff Jarvis’ tacit put down of Charlie Brooker’s column in the Guardian today slagging off not so much the Mac but the average Mac user poseur while there was a much more interesting debate going on at Booker’s column-come-blog.
There done it – I blog therefore I am. By the way I don't hate Macs, as I used them for years in journalism, but for some reason someone with a Mac Book Pro does annoy me for some reason. I don't own an iPod either.

Spice up your blog

Another new social media site which I have been playing around with having been introduced to it by Kevin at FuelMyBlog.
Spicypage, they claim, is a simple idea. Apparently it's: "a concept of perceiving the web through the eyes of the user where the ranking of the sites occurs through user votes. Sure there are ranking sites out there such as Alexa.com, Compete.com or Ranking.com that rank sites based on daily visitors."
They new sites and blogs might have superb features, but not a huge budget to promote the site's launch, and so will not be seen in Alexa.com or Ranking.com for a few years. The concept of Spicypage is to tell viewers what the best site/blog is out there and they want to know users' experiences with the sites, their likes and dislikes.
Founded in September of 2006, Spicypage is the social online community where anyone shares, talks about what websites or blogs they discover on the net. It is a friendly community that allows everyone to find easier ways to spread the notable sites or blogs when stumbled upon them.
SpicyPage lets you post, comment on , vote on, share your favorites sites or blogs with your friends and others like you.
I'm still testing it but on first experiences it looks like an nice anecdote to Technorati - and is fueled not by tags or links (which I've always thought of as low grade pimping) but by people actually looking at the quality of content.
Will give more reasoned verdict in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, FuelMyBlog has gone crazy.

What's in a byline?

Ahhhhh! My son, Frank, has got his first byline. He's doing his work experience at the moment - if you don't live in the UK, it's a bit like US interns or slavery. But he's really enjoying it as he want to be a journalist. He's 15 and I have tried to persuade him that journalism might not be the best profession (I did it for 15 years and loved it and then I had a family to feed) but he is determined and in the time-honoured tradition he believes his Dad is an idiot - thank God. He's a good judge of character. By the way, he's working at Spong.

French politics gets in the groove

Care of the Guardian comes this:
In his youth, he played air guitar to the Johnny Hallyday but the once square Nicolas Sarkozy, remember Les Web?, has reinvented himself as a moon-walking, jive-talking disco fiend courtesy of a popular website, discosarko.
The site, which was launched in December, has attracted about 4,000 hits a day as people click on options such as KC and the Sunshine Band's Shake Your Booty to laugh as a computer-generated Sarkozy delivers a performance somewhere between John Travolta and Mr Bean.
But the mocking site is in fact part of an effort by Mr Sarkozy's marketeers to make him seem in touch with the times. It is also a tool for collecting the contact details of potential supporters.
Arnaud Dassier, whose company manages part of Mr Sarkozy's cyber campaign, said the candidate himself gave the green light for his disco alter ego, after asking his wife Cecilia what she thought of it.
A spokeswoman from Mr Sarkozy's office said although the site was run by young "sarkonautes" who supported the candidate, it was "not at all being run by Mr Sarkozy's campaign headquarters".
Now call me an old cynic – but will David Cameron start doing this too? Or Tony Blair? Please nominate your candidates now…

Our verdict on the CIPR social media code

Below you can find GREEN's response to the lacklustre social media consultation produced by the CIPRFor those of you involved with the CIPR, the document has also been adopted as the official response by the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Regional Group.
The big quesitons now are: who has contributed to the consultatio (we have only seen one other PR blogger post his thoughts) and what will the CIPR do with these responses? I wait with baited breath!

GREEN Communication's response to the CIPR's social media guidelines consultation.

Before addressing the specific questions raised by the Social Media guidelines GREEN would like to give its views on the document as a whole.
GREEN believes that the document adds little to the needs of UK PR practitioners currently using or planning to use social media tools.
Firstly, the document addresses social media practices almost solely in relation to the CIPR's existing member Code of Conduct. This risks implying that social media ought to be considered separately from traditional media relations when in reality it is simply another tactic available to practitioners.
Secondly, the document attempts to reconcile social media, a rapidly growing and ground-breaking set of tools, with traditional roles and organisational cultures. Rather it would be better to educate practitioners about the way social media is changing the media and PR landscape.
If the document is to be valid beyond the next six months the CIPR must embrace the changes in society and societal values being brought about by social media and not attempt to contain them within its traditional comfort zone.
However, this point of view is understandable given that the majority of the CIPR's membership represents practitioners who are probably not using social media regularly.GREEN's response to specific consultation questions:

Question 1: Do you agree that this Formal Advisory (as and when amended) is a sufficient statement or should there be more far-reaching changes to the CIPR Code of Conduct itself to reflect the emergence of social media?
GREEN believes that this Formal Advisory is insufficient in that it aims to be a static documentation of how social media impinges on the CIPR's Code of Conduct rather than address the way social media and the internet are changing the society and its values and in turn the way PR practitioners engage with society.Accepting this sea-change in societal values and behaviour may well result in a review of the CIPR's Code of Conduct to reflect the emergence of social media.

Question 2: Do you believe this guidance for employers goes far enough, or should the CIPR issue more detailed advice?
The CIPR's advice for employers is basically sound but not comprehensive enough. Again, however, it seems to be implying that social media needs to be considered as separate from – rather than part of - other PR tactics. For instance, the issues suggested for use in a company social media policy equally apply to other areas of public relations.

Question 3: Do you believe employers should be producing a social media policy as standard?
Employers should not need a separate social media policy for the reasons explained above.
Employers must take account of the ways in which social media is affecting or has the potential to affect their brand, reputation and operations. Given the growth of social media and social networks it is imperative the CIPR can provide comprehensive guidance to members on devising social media policies. As already outlined the guidelines contained in the CIPR’s proposed Social Media Guidelines Consultation are basic but need to be more comprehensive.

Question 4: Do you agree with this advice or do you believe that employees should be prohibited from making any mention of their employer in personal blogs?
This question above all demonstrates exactly how little the CIPR understands social media. This is a preposterous idea and entirely unenforceable. As its name suggests, social media is a range of online media tools that are used by society. Likewise, social media content is created by individuals; it is essentially a series of networks 'owned' and used by society. Controversially it is fragmenting 'established' traditional media outlets both off and online. As a result, the following questions need to be addressed by the CIPR:
1. How exactly would the CIPR propose "prohibiting" employees from making mention of their employer?
2. If the CIPR decided to lobby Government to prohibit employees from mentioning their employer does it think this would be viewed favourably?
3. Does the CIPR understand the idea that linking personal blog content with professional blog or website content - intentionally or otherwise – represents the sea-change that underpins the need for a review of the CIPR's Code of Conduct to adopt to a shift in societal values?

The correct response to that fact that this linking can, and does, happen is not to stop it happening, but for organisations to adopt to the new media and its impact.

Question 5: Do you believe that astroturfing is contrary to the Code's requirement of integrity?
As stated earlier the proposed Social Media Guidelines wrongly seeks to duplicate the CIPR's existing Code of Conduct for what is essentially a specific PR tactic. Astroturfing is not an activity unique to social media. All off and online astroturfing breaches the integrity of a PR practitioner and therefore breaches the current CIPR Code of Conduct.

Question 6: Do you believe the principles of the Code of Conduct cover astrotrufing already, or is more detailed advice necessary?
As astroturfing is not a new phenomenon, the CIPR Code of Conduct should already deal with the problem adequately. If more detail is required then the question should be opened up to all members.

Question 7: Do you agree that such pitches require up-front disclosure of the initiator's role and the nature of the pitch?
From a best practice perspective all practitioners pitching to bloggers should disclose their role and nature of the pitch – as all practitioners pitching to traditional forms of media should.
Where blogging differs from traditional media is that many of the world's 60m bloggers are individuals that blog for personal satisfaction. These people are not media institutions and may not wish to be contacted by PR practitioners. The CIPR should place emphasis on this situation and encourage UK practitioners to check carefully before contacting, as they would with journalists.

Question 8: Should such ghosting be prohibited?
Ethically, ghosting should be prohibited for social media as well as traditional media. This would ensure that all PR material, from blog posts through to CEO press release quotations are fully transparent. Again the question is: prohibited by whom?

Question 9: Where such ghosting occurs, should this be made clear on the blog?
GREEN would always advise clients that having a clear policy is a prerequisite for any blog. This would detail any relevant disclosures including the possibility of ghosting, although GREEN would recommend that if clients are to blog successfully they must communicate in an authentic voice and avoid corporate platitudes.

Question 10: Is there any fundamental difference between ghosting print articles and ghosting online material?
There is no fundamental difference at all.

Question 11: Is it ethical for PR practitioners to be contributing to wikis in a professional capacity?
Yes. As long as PR practitioners contribute to wikis in a way that does not compromise guidelines governing either their professional behaviour or wiki contributors. Examples of these guidelines include the CIPR Code of Conduct or Wikipedia’s policy on editing entries which, as this social media paper reminds us, "emphasises that entries must be neutral in tone, factual and verifiable." Is it not more ethical that PR practitioners contribute in a professional manner where they must adhere to set guidelines as opposed to contributing in a non-professional manner – ie. off-the-record?

Question 12: If it is ethical, should there be detailed guidance for doing so, and should such guidance be produced by the CIPR or by the online community itself?
There is already guidance in place as demonstrated in the previous answer. The CIPR has sound guidance on the professional behaviour of PR practitioners and eg. Wikipedia has guidance on how contributors should behave. As the internet is – for the most part – an extremely open and self-regulating environment PR practitioners who wilfully disregard available guidance are likely to damage their reputation or the reputation of their client significantly among the communities they are specifically trying to target.

Question 13: Do you believe this document covers the issues highlighted in sufficient depth?
No, we don’t think it does. But this is primarily because of the CIPR's attempt to create a document that aims to capture in time a rapidly shifting set of values. One of the defining attributes of online and social media is the idea of a constantly evolving drive for new technology. It is a medium defined by a state of perpetual development or 'beta'. It is a social medium based around networked communities that are continuously evolving.
Approaching the medium from a traditional PR perspective will not work. Social networks are made up of fragmented, highly active users, rather than passive, mass media audiences.As mentioned in the introduction to this response, if this document is to be valid beyond the next six months – or at all - the CIPR must embrace the changes and not attempt to contain or constrain them within its traditional comfort zone.

Question 14: Do you believe there are other important issues which should be addressed (and if so, what are they)?
Hopefully the way in which the internet and social media is changing the way business, law, public policy, politics, culture, in fact everything which is influenced by society, functions has been demonstrated above. The impact of social media cannot be understated or underestimated.
The PR industry has at its core reputation management. This management is undertaken through the effective building and management of mutually beneficial relationships. These attributes – relationships and mutual understanding – are central to social media. The CIPR must take serious and open-minded steps to ensure it stays in touch with society and its shift in values, behaviour and expectations.

Outside the box? It must be Pandora

I’ve been hanging out at Pandora Internet Radio, pretty much every time I go online for the past six months. I’ve marked my life out in songs and music and Pandora is a nice antedote to becoming too closeted in one’s tastes as, once you set up an account you have access to so much stuff.
So when I set up an Ali Farka Toure radio station I suddenly had access to a wider range of African musicians I hadn’t come across before.
Pandora is the brainchild of the Music Genome Project – which they claim is the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. MGP says: “Together our team of 50 musician-analysts have been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song.
“It takes 20-30 minutes per song to capture all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound - melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics ... and more - close to 400 attributes!
“We continue this work every day to keep up with the incredible flow of great new music coming from studios, stadiums and garages around the country.”
Which all sounds a bit too gushing and wanky for my taste but I do like the service. Basically it’s a musical aggregator and allows you to discover new music based on you existing interests – so I have several feeds from Ali Farka Toure to The Ramones to Bob Dylan to The Tower of Power (remember them – 1970s funksters?). Right now its playing And There You Go by Vin Rogue (never heard of them) but they are a bit like a prog-rock Gojan Project.
What I don’t get is how they are bypassing all the copyright stuff?

YouTubers are in the money

Social media can now make you money as YouTube have announced that users who upload their films to the video-sharing website will soon get a share of the ad revenue.

YouTube founder Chad Hurley has told the BBC that his team was working on a revenue-sharing mechanism that would "reward creativity". The system would be rolled out in a couple of months and use a mixture of adverts, including short clips shown ahead of the actual film.
YouTube has more than 70 million users a month and was recently bought by Google but it will be interesting to see how the YouTube community reacts – you know what bloggers are like, they kinda hate big business and this might be a step too far. What do you think?
The offer applies only for people who own the full copyright of the videos that they are uploading to the YouTube website. It will be interesting to see how they do the maths on allocating revenue to each video.
According to recent reports YouTube is working on "audio fingerprinting" technologies to identify copyrighted material. This was revealed by Hurley in a session on social networking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Davos is probably something else the bloggers hate – particularly so given the chairman of Shell’s comments denying global warning on the BBC’s Radio 4 Today Programme.
Other video sharing sites such as Revver already share advertising revenues with users uploading original content, but only YouTube has managed to attract an audience measuring in the tens of millions – which means big bucks.
My view? I always thought that this would be the natural extension of UGC – collectives would become quasi-income generating sites where everyone would share a shekel from the traffic generated. Google get a share and I get a share – if I could ever be bothered to upload a video. A problem as I don’t even have a camera.

Bloggies nominations are out

They’ve just published the Bloggies 2007 nominations and quite a few are from the UK – Hugh MacLeod’s Gaping Void is included.
What has impressed me is the astonishing amount of talent out their and the wide range of issues people are addressing – from sex through to making the perfect meal.
And all the writing is excellent! Check them out now.

Social media becomes the brand

User generated websites and social media have finally hit the big time I notice following an announcement by the brandchannel that YouTube and Wikipedia have entered the top five.
Google rmains in the number one spot ahead of Apple but it says a lot about how far social media has come when YouTube and Wikipedia can be ranked ahead of Starbucks. Some might challenge brandchannel’s findings as the annual survey polls 3,625 branding professionals and students who are asked: "Which brand had the most impact on our lives in 2006?."
Google, which has moved into online advertising, mail and blogging, seized the top spot for the second consecutive year, ahead of Apple.
The dramatic debut of these is an indication of a larger trend - the growing impact of online brands built on user-generated contents.
Other new brand winners were News Corp's online chat site MySpace, debuting in 15th place in the North America rankings, and Al Jazeera, which advances to 19th place globally having launched its English language channel in November and after its drop from fifth to 25th in 2005.

Blue Monday brings a smile to GREEN

As Blue Monday comes to an end even we have been surprised by the press coverage we have generated on the most depressing day of the year.

This is the second time GREEN has beat the Blue Monday Blues with a one-off campaign in support of the Samaritans. Blue Monday, 'the worst day of the year', was first defined by Dr Cliff Arnall and marks the final full week of January when people experience a series of combined depressive effects.

To help people tackle the blues and stay smiling on Blue Monday we invited people to get involved in a range of activities that are taking place across the UK.

At GREEN's offices in Yorkshire we built our own beach and held a party - complete with Hawiain shirts and music.

In London Samaritans volunteers were on hand at London's Victoria station during rush-hour handing out packets of Yorkshire Tea and advice on de-stressing to commuters.

Meanwhile, Yorkshire Housing Group was handing out Positive Social Behaviour Orders (PoSBOs) rather than ASBOs to young people from across the region to reward them for their efforts to make local communities happier and friendlier.

All great stuff and all taken up by the media including The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Independent among others. Loads of coverage too in the big regional titles as well as mentions on Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Leeds and BBC Radio Kent. Indeed, tonight Andy will be interviewed by Colombia Radio.

What has been most interesting for anyone remotely interested in social media has been the reaction of the blogosphere. A quick search on Blue Monday on Google Blog search returns more than 290,000 mentions.

Meanwhile, a similar search on Technorati throws up 269,821 results. Now I accept a lot of these will be spurious - but just shows if you hit on a subject which has legitamcy with a lot of people it can quickly go viral.

Top marks to Andy for coming up with the idea, Simon for implementing it, supported by Lorna Bunnell - who is here on work experience for John Moore's University, Liverpool.

Blue Monday was devised using the following mathematical equation:

[W + (D-d)] x TQ

M x NA

The model was broken down using six immediately identifiable factors: weather (W), debt (d), time since Christmas (T), time since failing our new year's resolutions (Q), low motivational levels (M) and the feeling of a need to take action (Na). The equation calculates that Monday, January 22 is officially the worst day of the year, when the Christmas glow has faded away, New Year's resolutions have been broken, cold winter weather has set in and credit card bills will be landing on doormats across the land - whilst the January pay-cheque is still one week away.

Baby you can drive my car

Shit! My car has just told me it needs a service! It didn't speak obviously - but it did leave a message which repeats every time I turn the ignition.
This is worrying because after years of being in the ignoble position of perpertual second-car ownership (Mini Cooper – good; Mini Metro – shite and accident prone; Ford Escort – good and awful depending on the weather; Peugeot 405 – not bad but ugly; VW Golf – best car ever; Frontera – ridiculous, why oh why?; new BMW Mini Cooper – oh just grow up!; Audi A4 – God I feel old).
However, few things (and remember I once stopped a runaway horse on my own – and impressed my mother no end as it tried to run down Main Street, Menston, West Yorkshire) make me feel less manly than getting my car serviced. On some level, I feel I should be doing that stuff myself, but I struggle to even open the bonnet (the hood for our ex-Colonial friends).
I can point at the tyres and say: “Tyres”. I can even point at the engine and say: “Engine”. But I suspect that will not impress the service engineer (as they are called now) or lowly Grease Monkey (which I much prefer).
The appointment starts thus on the phone:
Me: "I'd like to get my car serviced. It's an A4." (This in the tone of a man who seems to know what he is talking about.)
Grease Monkey: "What year is it?"
Me: "Um... I don't know."
Grease Monkey: "What? You don't know the year your car was made?"
Me: “No. Does anyone? Does it matter?”
Grease Monkey: “Not really but if we need to order parts it’s useful to know.”
Me: “I’ve only had it about year – what can have gone wrong with the parts? The car told me to get in touch with you.”
Grease Monkey can already sense my fear and stupidity and at this point in the telephone conversation, I hope the kids burst in to tell me how well they are doing in Total Combat with their new mate in Moscow and can I come and look at their score. It doesn’t happen.
Now at this point it worries me I am taking advice from my car about when it gets serviced - in the past I only had them serviced when they broke down - but what do I know?
When I take the car in, the people at Audi (Wakefield by the way) are very professional but treat me like a mechanical idiot – which is very good judgment on their side. But they ooze so much automotive testosterone, even the woman, who appears to have watched too much Top Gear and believes that Jeremy Clarkson is some sort of style icon even with that hair cut. As a result I just curl up into the usual foetal position
So, in a service driven economy – I just keep my mouth shut and pay up the £400-odd requested with no idea what I have paid for. But hey! The windscreen wipers don’t make that noise anymore.

Sorry about this but the internal combustion engine pisses me off!

Wikiseek and another new search engine

I love Wikipedia and I suspet I use it every day. Meanwhile, even when I do a Google search the top results generally include a Wikipedia entry. Now there is a new search engine for Wikipedia.
Wikiseek is a new search engine which indexes only results from Wikipedia and sites which are linked to or from Wikipedia.
Wikiseek is the first product from SearchMe, and plans a range of ‘long tail search engines’. The company claims that, because the results are limited to Wikipedia and sites linked to/from it, their search engine is far less susceptible to spam and SEO schemes (in fact, there may well be some duplicate content issues, since it is pulling content from Wikipedia, so SEO if you ask me).
On the plus side, the interface is clean and the tag cloud containing relevant Wikipedia categories is useful in refining your search.
The big problem with this search engine is the relevance of the results because when compared with results from the big three search engines, Wikiseek’s results are far less relevant.
I’m not sure how this fits into the whole 3D search thing that everyone seems to be talking about.

Beat the Blue Monday blues

Watch out for Monday, January 22 – the most depressing day of the year. This year at GREEN we are planning to beat the Blue Monday Blues with a one-off campaign in support of the Samaritans.
Blue Monday, ‘the worst day of the year’, was first defined by Dr Cliff Arnall of Cardiff University and marks the final full week of January when people experience a series of combined depressive effects.
To help people tackle the blues and stay smiling on Blue Monday we are inviting people to get involved in a range of activities that are taking place across the UK. These include:
World’s biggest beach party - Companies across the UK are being encouraged to bring some sunshine to Blue Monday by turning their office into a beach in an attempt to break the record for the world’s biggest beach party. Firm’s taking part are also urged to help raise funds for Samaritans.
De-stress with a cuppa - Samaritans volunteers will be on-hand at London’s Victoria station during rush-hour handing out packets of Yorkshire Tea and advice on de-stressing to commuters.
Single launch – Soul 12-piece This is Seb Clarke will be performing their new single, ‘Just Can’t Carry On’, and talking about beating depression on BBC Radio 2’s Aled Jones show on Sunday 21 January 2007.
Over at GREEN’s we plan to re-brand for the day to BLUE Communications and we will brighten up the day will be turning our ground floor into a beach complete with deckchairs and sand.
One of our clients, Yorkshire Housing Group, will be handing out Positive Social Behaviour Orders (PoSBOs) rather than ASBOs to young people from across the region to reward them for their efforts to make local communities happier and friendlier.
Another client, Greens Health & Fitness in Wakefield will be running fitness classes to help the public feel good on Blue Monday. They will be offering blue health drinks with 50% of the proceeds going to charity and running a prize draw to win two one-month membership passes.
Blue Monday was devised using the following mathematical equation:

[W + (D-d)] x TQ
M x NA

The model was broken down using 6 immediately identifiable factors; weather (W), debt (d), time since Christmas (T), time since failing our new year’s resolutions (Q), low motivational levels (M) and the feeling of a need to take action (Na).
The equation calculates that Monday, January 22 is officially the worst day of the year, when the Christmas glow has faded away, New Year’s resolutions have been broken, cold winter weather has set in and credit card bills will be landing on doormats across the land – whilst the January pay-cheque is still one week away.

Fuelmyblog - new blogging community

I’ve been having a jolly online conversation with Kevin Dixie, the creator of a new British-based blog aggregator fuelmyblog – I am calling it an aggregator not him so apologies to Kevin if I got it wrong. But it's very Web 2.0.
It’s vaguely reminiscent of the highly successful milliondollarhomepage but Kevin is not seeking to make money out of those who post their blogs to the site – which is very blog-friendly but is seeking to make a few shekels out of advertisers.
Fuelmyblog allows people to upload their blog with a small image and description and they are then advertised for free for at least five years. Kevin says: "The idea of the site is to eventually create database of every good blog on the web, after all, only good bloggers will want more people reading their pages."
Wonder what Technorati will have to say about this?
While in its infancy, the site looks promising and already has over 200 hundred blogs advertised on it, around 40 bloggers are adding their blogs daily. "We are very pleased with the number of visitors and bloggers that are talking about it, we expect it to grow substantially now people are returning back to their PC's after the seasonal break" says Kevin, who came up with the idea after writing his own blog for the past few months.
He tells me: “I launched it really as a cheap way of getting a lot of blogs in one space, milliondollar scripts are easy to buy! I wasn't sure whether to charge for adverts or go free. Not charging has had a huge impact! I plan to use the community by broadcasting a radio show and getting everyone involved to talk about each others blogs.
“To further the site I need to get some either income or capital so that is being looked into and yes, I would like it to be an interactive blog community. To make money I will try to either get sponsors or advertisements on the site, I am getting over 500 new unique visits per day so it should prove to be of use to somebody but I also don't want to appear as selling out! So I guess I will need some decent PR from somewhere!”
Fuelmyblog wants this site to be the first place people go to when looking for a blog to read. "I aim to increase the size of the site by re-investing any revenue generated in the future from paying advertisers, right now it is just a hobby. (Having) said that, this hobby is taking over, we got 10,000 new links on Google this morning and a daily Alexa rank of 29,400 three days ago!"
The simple process of advertising will appeal to even the most inexperienced web users argues Kevin and I wish him well.

Vote on the cheesiest chat up lines

Over at Wensleydale Creamery we are getting ready for Valentine's Day with the launch of a special heart-shaped Wensleydale cheese wrapped in red wax - a perfect gift for your cheese-loving lover.
This got us thinking about cheesy chat up lines - and we've heard some howlers in the past - so we have launched a survey to find the cheesiest chat up lines and look forward to your contribution. To take part in the survey simply go to Wensleydale Cheesy Chat Up Lines.
We've used an online survery company called SurveyMonkey and so far it seems to be working really way and is an excellent resource to use with other clients. We'll keep you posted on developments and please do have a look at the survey or add your own worst chat up lines on the comments page at wensleydaleblog.

From the excellent Head Rush. This lady talks a lot of sense.

PR: Crisis what crisis?

My colleague Simon has written an interesting post at Simon Says on the perilous state of the PR industry following the publication of the latest research on the sector by Lighthouse.
The general thrust of the research (mainly American I think) is that PR companies are in a mess financially and many will go bust. Indeed, anecdotally I have heard of two major agencies in the North of England that have gone tits up but gentlemanly honour forbids me from saying which ones – they are both based in Harrogate.
Lighthouse notes: “High-volume PR that weakly reflects brand values is not valued by the board. As a result, PR is disrespected. It holds a trivial position in most organizations.
“PR's inability to produce valuable results is reflected in under-resourcing and under-pricing by agencies. Most agencies' pre-tax margins are a miserable 3.6%. Twenty percent of agencies price below cost. Their sales growth conceals forthcoming ruin. A further 44% of PR companies barely break even. The remaining one-third of agencies deliver real value, but their profitability is also threatened by consultancies that price below cost.”
Over at GREEN this has not been my experience. We’ve just had one of our best years in terms of sales and profitability. And in the first two weeks of January we have four new business prospects that we are pitching for.
The problem is clients – isn’t that always the case – some get it immediately and understand the benefits of robust, honest media relations and reap the benefits (thankfully most of our clients). The doubters tend to treat it as advertising even though advertising failed when it drifted from its scientific roots to become a creative art form (I’ve always thought advertising art directors calling them selves Creatives rather pretentious). Their goal is to make famous adverts, not famous products or business returns.
There is a danger that PR goes the same way. Good PR companies, however, will continue to be successful because they are good at delivering on their client’s bottom line – whether that is selling more cheese (nod to Wensleydale), creating a unique co-creation company (nod to Ladybank Company of Distillers) or encouraging people to adopt a great bread brand (nod to Warburtons). All this involves a lot of damned hard work by dedicated professionals.
I didn’t intend to write this as a paean to my company rather than to point up that maybe some companies deserve to go by the way – because of bad PR and bad financial management. And clients should remember that you get what you pay for…
As Analyst Equity points out: “PR can play a crucial role in bringing the brand to life. However, PR needs real understanding of how customer perceptions are changing in the target markets if it is to align the brand to customers. The reality is that few PR managers even align their campaigns to the corporate marketing plan, let alone aligning their campaigns to customers: in-house PR managers know how few agencies ask for the marketing plan; PR agencies know how few clients offer it. PR can transform brand perceptions, support sale-making push-pull marketing programmes, and integrate PR into the wider business marketing engine.”

New Year, New Ideas

Thank God that’s over – there is only so much time you can spend in the bosom of your family (and much as I love them, my family’s bosom is very ample!), meanwhile the normal human body is not designed to consumer that amount of alcohol, turkey, ham, roasted vegetables, mince pies, Christmas pudding, alcohol, turkey, ham, mince pies, Christmas pudding (repeat).

Just got Burns’ Night to look forward too now. Anyway, I’m back in the saddle and 2007 begins.

So what does 2007 hold? Less of the same I hope but here are my ten predictions for the next 12 months:

1. Blogging – I don’t believe the blog is dead. What will emerge in 2007 is community blogging and networks bringing together people with shared interests.
2. The world will get hotter – expect headlines like Phew What a Scorcher but no tabloid explanation.
3. The arrival of the $100 PC (launch due in July) – opening the door to another universal conversation and the emancipation of Third World individuals looking for a voice.
4. It will all go tits up in Iraq, Afganistan, Iran, North Korea – fill in gaps as you see fit.
5. Mashup or move on – the convergence meme will continue and I suspect that this will be a big theme this year.
6. Pauline Fowler murder trial should take place in East Enders sometime in the mid-year.
7. Brown booze – ie spirits – will become main stream again. Moreover, I am hopeful that more people we see the benefits of companies, like my client – Ladybank – offering people an opportunity to decide what they want rather than what they get. D'oh
   
8. Old Media will continue to be frightened of and attack New Media. What do you know anyway you geek freak! Dead trees is the future and blogs are the past.
9. TV and online video merge - it seems logical that traditional networks will try first to beat 'em, then realise they must join 'em.
10. Google will be perceived to be the new News Corporation or Murdoch Lite.

What is for certain is that we will all have to work harder, smarter, longer and for less. I, for one, hope to spread a little more happiness and will be Blogging for a Better World. Join me in the conversation.

Merry 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.

Person of the Year? It’s you

Time Magazine’s annual Person of Year takes a neat turn in 2006 by nominating You this year.
According to Time’s Lev Grossman: “The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year.
“But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story .. it’s the story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.”
That's what makes all this so interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail. There's no road map for how an organism that's not a bacterium lives and works together on this planet in numbers in excess of six billion.
Come 2007 will blogging and social media sites make a difference? I don’t know. Do you? Now is the time to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician but citizen to citizen, person to person.
At LeWeb3 the parting shot from the conference was a positive one – blog for a better world. That’s what I am going to do – cheesy I know – but each week I hope to post a comment on changing the world for the better. Whether that’s by random acts of kindness or pointing out injustices in the world. Will it make a difference – it’s not sure but if enough of do it… so join in the conversation.

Matrimonial mashups in Brum

With a nod to Stuart Bruce I was interested to come across the above. What a delicious revenge to take against an errant husband and what a brilliant way to harness the use of "old media".
Apparently the billboard in the centre of Birmingham cost about £2,500 to expose Jane Doe's philandering husband's affair with her best friend. If you're struggling to read it - this is the text in full:

To my 'dear husband Mark' and 'my best friend Shelley',
You are the most despicable, deceitful people I have ever met. I know what you did and I'm disgusted.
I've changed the locks Mark, burnt your clothes and emptied OUR joint account - to pay for this poster.
You deserve each other.

All well and good but when you go online to Jane's MySpace site she has 1983 "friends" offering advice and support. At present I can't find any reference to her Ex having a similar site. And as Stuart points out Jane has been a regular correspondent about her suspicions with local Birmingham radio station BRMB's Elliott and Caroline - who also just happen to be the first friends that appear on her MySpace blog.
Writing this now this looks like a great story - although I've seen no mainstream coverage as yet - but Stuart is suspicious as BRMB's involvement might mean that this is not all that it seems. The station is accomplished at creating controversial publicity for itself, such as its 'Two strangers and a wedding' stunts. Whatever the truth of the matter it's another good example of how old media is not dead and how new media adds another dimension to the marketing mix.

If this is the case we should be told - but then again there is nothing new under the sun as a similar stunt was pulled off in Manhattan earlier this year (see picture below). I'm not sure how I would react if my wife had an affair but I suspect my fiery Celtic temper would not be as polished as Jane's.

What a complete f**k up

What a complete f**k up. Sam Sethi has been sacked for blogging negatively about LeWeb3 on Techcrunch UK&Ireland by Michael Arrington – one of the event’s sponsors. The site has now been put on hold.
Meanwhile, Loic Le Meur is being vilified throughout the blogosphere by all those who wanted to open up a conversation which he chose to close down – this from the guy responsible for one of the main blogging platforms in Europe.
I for one thought that LeWeb3 was going to be an un-conference with lots of conversational feedback, bust-ups, arguments, fights and disagreements – which is fine. However, the fall out from Loic's political fumblings has been to completely undermine his own position with the very audience he should be engaging with.
My colleague Simon, in this matter, believes in the cock-up theory and although I have never been a champion of the conspiracy theory it all smells a bit fishy - but hey I used to be a journalist.
I wish Sam well and hope that he/we can create something useful out of all this. How about a Web2.0 Un-Conference in the UK? Any sponsors out there? Any thoughts? Let's make something in the UK.
By the way the picture is of the media scrum which took all attention away from the conversation we hoped to have to allow that Sarkozy to have his onoastic moment in front of a non-plussed international audience.
After all the above, a nice counterpoint to all the arguments agaist LeWeb3 can be found at Gaping Void where Hugh MacLeod argues all the positive points that came out of Paris. I, for one, need some time to think about it before I commit a detailed analysis of the whole event.
But at the end of the day it has got us all talking.

Politics, blogging and bluster

We will shortly be leaving Paris and LeWeb3. Did we learn anything new?
Well we learned that the big corporates have now woken up to the opportunities of Web2.0 and social media and are now seeking to muscle in on the scene by claiming to have wonderful new products that will make us shiny happy people?
We have learned that the Americans like to talk down to the Europeans – and you cant really blame them when we set our ambitions to low. We learned that China is getting bigger and that the English language is taking of the world – which is nice for us Brits.
We learned that French politicians will pick a coin out of piece of dogshit with their teeth if it will get them a vote (I paraphrase this quote from Flaubert).
For those of you who didn’t know most of the audience at LeWeb3 are not happy that the last day of the event was hi-jacked by two of France’s leading politicians who are all posturing in the run up to the general election.
What annoyed most people, at what was supposed to be an un-conference, is that François Bayrou, president of the centrist Union for French Democracy and Nicolas Sarközy, Minister of the Interior – spoke only in French.
Everyone elese at the conference had spoken English. In the crush of media Sarkozy barked out his 15 minute speech – a call to arms for all French bloggers and plea of “vote for me” – and f***ed off.
It went down hill there from there on in – although my colleague Simon Collister said the conference had already taken a noise dive before the politicians turned up so at least they made it interesting.
A final word on Loic LeMeur – who has taken a battering for his organisation of LeWeb3 (check out the following technorati seach). At the end of the conference the face of Six Apart in Europe told the delegates (those few who remained) that he apologised for the unexpected appearance of two sniping politicians, but faced with the same opportunity in the future he would do it again.
I think a career in politics beckons - what do you think?

Simon Collister shows Katie Jenkins - the founder of Live The Lingo - the different blogging options available to would-be bloggers at LeWeb3 in Paris. Typepad or Blogger - which way will she go?

A-lister gets down with the people

It’s always a dangerous thing to meet someone you’ve admired from afar – so I wasn’t sure how I would react when I met Gaping Void’s Hugh MacLeod.
He’s due t
o wrap up the conference with a talk on micro-branding I think. I’ve just met him in the coffee area and can report he is a top bloke.
I like the way has created, in Stormhoek and English Cut, two very different stories that were seeded on the internet to grow into two successful businesses by basically sticking two fingers up to business convention.
I think we both agreed that as soon as you start telling a story about your brand or product – they will come. That has been the case with Wensleydale and Ladybank Company of Distillers.
By the way there has been some interest at the conference about Ladybank and the whole concept of a co-creation company and we are hopeful to find a speaking gig for James Thomson, the brains behind the Britain’s first co-creation whisky producer.