You can now play your iPhone as if it were an ocarina. The ocarina dates back more than 12,000 years, it’s a vessel flute, and has a rounder sound than the transverse flute. You can hear an Ocarina on this website related to Mexican culture. I love that something so ancient is getting a new lease of life on something so modern.
Here’s a video of the ocarina iPhone version.
image music
An hour where millions of people turned off one light, photographed the sky, video, blogged and twittered about it.
The total savings in electricity won’t have that big an impact on our total use of energy, but that’s not the point.
The point is that millions of people around the world voted for the planet, actively signed up their support for the planet in the face of an environmental crisis.
This comes as I finish reading Seth Godin’s book Tribe, and the Earth Hour is a great example of someone with little power building a tribe. A tribe with a purpose who are prepared to take action.
Too many meetings. I sometimes feel that I don’t get to do any real work done because I’m in meetings all day. My survival tips;
It’s not rocket science – I got most of these from Manager Tools – the world’s most useful site for new managers.
They also recommend working through ground rules at the beginning of meetings, I did this with my team – they generated a similar list (I said it wasn’t rocket science!). However there are a couple of interesting additions, coffee is a requirement and our team meetings should be held outside the office occasionally. It works well – and the meetings are usually half an hour.
This week Seth Godin weighed in with his meeting rules, lots of the same concepts, but a couple of things struck me.
He also questions why meetings are always set at a default one hour length – and suggests scheduling meetings in increments of five minutes. I like this, high potential for confusion if you’ve used default one hour meetings for a long time.
He suggests removing the chairs, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard of this, I can’t find a reference now but I think Queen Elizabeth II keeps her advisors standing (the origin of a “standing committee” perhaps).
I like his last suggestion; “If you’re not adding value to a meeting, leave.” I’ve been tempted many times, next time I’ve got a meeting scheduled where my value may be limited I’ll make sure I’m sitting next to the door.
image meeting
The first task for the candidates was to start their own cleaning company – just what they were dressed for.
It’s a simple task; strategy = decide what service you want to provide, buy your tools, find your clients, deliver. As always watch your costs.
Empire, the guys team, won and got themselves a cocktail party.
Ignite lost, despite earning more revenue, because they spent almost all the money they were allowed to spend, coming in just under the 200 pounds allowed. Anita Shah congratulated the team “well done, we’ve come in under budget”. Not an attitude that would work in a start up company – and not an attitude that will work with Sir Alan.
Mona chose the co-leader Debra Barr and Anita Shah to go into the board room with her. Mona damned Debra for not taking responsibility but then pulled Anita into the boardroom based on Debra’s word, something wrong with the story there.
Sir Alan Sugar commented that they’re either very smart or very stupid, to which Margaret Montford commented that they had no commercial sense whatsoever. She’s right.
Sir Alan’s judgement was that Anita, who had put herself forward as “one of the best business brains of Britain” showed no business acumen.
“Anita, you’re fired”.
In my view; none of the women really performed. Usually that gets laid at the feet of the project manager but Anita Shah made the fatal mistake of celebrating being under budget – when they’d actually spent too much.
Many companies have already put thought into the use of social media by employees. There’s been an interesting demonstration of different approaches to Twitter – from the world of sport.
I discussed the same subject recently with a group of friends working in different companies. Almost everyone had some kind of limit on what type of sites they could see; youtube, web email sites, blogs, flickr, facebook/myspace, chat tools and wiki all got a mention. The company logic seems to be on the basis of what is a distraction while you’re at work.
Interestingly some companies allow access to facebook seeing it as an important networking tool, and for some sites such as wiki were visible, but it wasn’t possible to contribute.
I’ve been playing with twitter in the last week, and it is work-related (really). I’ve found lots of information via Twitter and uncovered a range of blogs relevant to my job (really). I’ve used wikis, blogs and discussion forums (yes, really) to help with work issues or projects for years. And checked job applicants on networking sites. For me all these sites are tools, and becoming more essential by the day.
So which is it? Will the companies with the conservative policies prove to be more efficient and more profitable? Or will the more open companies prove to acquire more knowledge and be more profitable?
My suspicion is the more open companies will win, not only will they be able to acquire more knowledge but they’ll find it easier to attract talent, particularly young talent.
Explaining the logic of life for all time seems daunting, but Tim Harford tackles it with characteristic simplicity and shows that we’re more rational, in more situations than we realise.
He begins with gambling and addiction, both of which have elements that can be explained by the economist’s favourite; gaming theory. He tackles the world of dating, and finds we’re rational even when we’re romantic. The fields of work is also examined, including the very rational reasons for your boss earning so very much more than you do.
He dares to discuss racism, and depressingly finds that there is also a rational component to some racism as he discusses Thomas Schellings model of segregation. The model suggests that if even a slight preference for one’s own race exists across a population then segregation is inevitable. Sounds implausible? It’s demonstrated in the video below.
Where the book is weaker, and he admits that the evidence here is thinner, is in the last chapter where he looks at the broad sweep of history.
All in all it’s a good book, with plenty of information to help you astonish your friends. “Did you know that cities are less polluting than rural areas?” ought to get the debate rolling.
Powerpoint is alive and well but it’s undergoing a makeover, an extreme one. Which should be welcome news, except that something’s missing; content.
By now most of us have learnt what not to do, either by experiencing it ourselves or via the mockery of our colleagues. But just in case you’re one of the 3 people on the planet who has a computer and hasn’t heard the phrase “death by powerpoint” here’s what not to do.
There’s plenty of information out there on what you should do as well;
And apparently people are listening. I’ve noticed a much greater use of clever images in presentations, and while the text slide is not dead, it’s certainly playing more of a “supporting” role in presentations.
However what many presenters seem to have heard is “use more images, use videos – your audience will love you”. With the result that I’ve seen old videos, an image of a mossy tree used to demonstrate “embrace”, and worst of all listened to a presenter explain why he chose particular images to represent certain concepts. If you have to explain your choice of image then I’d say you have the wrong image.
What was missing was a story, a red thread, a concept behind the presentation. What was missing was content.
In fact the best presentation I’ve seen all week was a rather old fashioned one, fairly ugly template, fairly text heavy. But there was content. There was a concept. There was a point of view. The presenter knew his content, and talked to the audience, looked at us, engaged us.
I suspect by racing to fill our presentations with the great, dramatic images that will deliver the high impact we’ve forgotten that old old golden rule. Content is King. And we’ve certainly forgotten the original purpose of our presentation – engaging our audience.
image presentation
The Apprentice, the UK version, starts again 25 March on BBC 1 at 9PM.
The candidates have been announced for what is billed as “the job interview from hell”. As in other years there’s a range of ages; 21 to 36, and a range of occupations; lawyer, teacher, sandwich maker, consultant and a fair few who are already managers.
On paper the sandwich maker – actually a young guy who has built up a chain of sandwich shops and already makes more than the job offers – looks interesting. Young, driven, no education are all characteristics guaranteed to appeal to Sir Alan Sugar (SAS). However the big question, if he’s already earning so much and has been so entrepreneurial why go for this? SAS is likely to conclude that it’s for media exposure and that won’t score points.
An unlikely candidate is Anita Shah, a highly-educated articulate woman. SAS tends to throw these out in the first couple of week unless they show big personality (read; are very annoying) and are therefore good TV.
This year we get to play along – there’s an online score counter so you can follow who others think will be fired, and add your opinion to the mix. I’m assuming I’ll be able to play along from outside the UK.Last year’s winner lied on his CV, imitated a pterodactyl in an interview, and frankly showed little leadership in any of the tasks. It can only be up from there.
This book was published last month, and does what it says in the title – lists the best books, and tells you why they’re important.| After you’ve submitted your story, you can download a “badge” for your blog to display which is your favourite, unfortunately WordPress doesn’t display it as prettily as the site delivers it.The story I contributed was on Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds – it’s a long time favourite of mine, and if you haven’t already used it you should. It’s the clearest guide to how to improve your presentations, and make powerpoint into an effective tool, that I’ve read. |  |
I went to a movie this weekend, a movie that featured a lot of sparkly shoes, pretty clothes, champagne parties and a predictably happy ending. A movie some would call a chickflick. The few men in the audience were on dates, at a guess the audience demographic was female (80%) and young (18-35). So the movie had found the right target.
The ads presented before the movie were interesting.
| Ad 1: Grolsch |
| It’s a beer I like, but this particular ad features a famous architect (Roberto Meyer) and a famous rockstar (Barry Hay) discussing blueprints. Two middle-aged guys making witty comments about architecture and sharing a beer.
Target audience male, 30+. |
| Ad 2: Killzone |
| Killzone is a playstation multiplayer game. It’s a particularly violent game, you can get a taste of the ad here.
Target audience: male, 30+ |
| Ad 3: Adidas |
| One of the “houseparty” advertisements from Adidas, with shots of skateboarding, tagging, dancing, painting, swimming… all young and happy people. Ratio of men to women = 3:2
Target audience: both sexes (more male?) under 30, |
| Ad 4: Axe |
| This is an ad for male deodorant, set in a caveman village. Where the caveman wearing axe gets to wear leather, ride a bison, and of course – get the girl. The ads can be seen in its entirety here.
Target audience: male, 30ish |
There’s not really anything wrong with the ads per se, but they’re missing their demographic. Women do drink beer, play online games and wear sports shoes. Potentially they may buy deodorant for their boyfriends or partners. But none of these ads really targetted women. None.
Why is that?
A similar line of ads could have included Coke, Wii, Nike, L’Oreal. All of whom have products that suit women and produce ads that are more relevant for women.
The media sellers from the movie theatres are not smart about their sales strategy. They’re lazily selling in bulk avoiding all the tools marketers should use. If they used market segmentation tools to understand to whom the movies are targetted they could sell the advertising space to the right companies at a premium.
Change Meme 