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Always late to the party

By ⋅ July 5, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Adidas sports bags, Sta-pressed trousers, Nike trainers… I’ve never been at the leading edge of fashion, one reason I’ve cultivated a more “classic” aesthetic. I just don’t look good in fashionable clothes. I’m usually the one who signals the end of a trend merely by surrendering to the inevitable. When I get an iPhone I [...]

Consumer Dialogue… like, for real

By ⋅ July 2, 2007 ⋅ One comment

On Saturday, I joined the Stormhoek group on Facebook. Having restocked at Tesco that afternoon and noted that Stormhoek wines were labelled “discontinued”, I pointed this out in the group. Chris from Stormhoek responded saying they are simply out of stock and that Stormhoek is not being discontinued by Tesco. I feel so included.

Keen to discredit “The Cult Of The Amateur”

By ⋅ June 24, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

I enjoyed reading Lawrence Lessig’s comments on Andrew Keen’s “The Cult Of The Amateur”. His and Charlene Croft’s comments saved me time and spared me disappointment. The idea that culture is defined by those who are somehow “qualified” – usually through a relationship with a major media company – is something I’ve never felt comfortable [...]

Learning From SCRUM

By ⋅ June 20, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Ever since the SPA-CAM SCRUM event, I’ve been looking to use what I learned. Could we adapt the principles to improve communication in our team? Our team is unable to meet together every morning, so we decided to answer the three questions in a morning e-mail to the team. Also, with a short time to [...]

Keep digging

By ⋅ June 19, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Two and a half years ago I moved to Cambridge and now I regularly commute to London by train. Some regard my 90 minute journey with horror, but I find it more relaxing than my old 60 minute tube trip. My morning journey starts in the flat, featureless, fenland of Cambridge. The tracks swing east [...]

Everything you need to know in a treasure hunt

By ⋅ June 15, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Earlier this week, Dave Snowden talked about the difficulties people experience when joining a new culture. A few months ago, a friend of mine from UEL told me how they use “treasure hunt”-style events when inducting new students. Google reveals this is popular in academia. Sadly I’ve lost the URL to one institution’s site. They’d [...]

Keep your eye on the ball

By ⋅ May 27, 2007 ⋅ 3 comments

Here’s a video clip I hadn’t seen before. Count the number of passes made by the people in white shirts in this basketball video. Dave Snowden refers to this to highlight the need to see, attend to and act upon the data in front of us, going on to mention the colour changing card trick [...]

New GapingVoid Blog Cards

By ⋅ May 26, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Hugh MacLeod’s latest blog cards include two of my favourite Gaping Void cartoons: software (above) and evil bunny: Oddly, the logic of “software” reminds me of the NRA slogan “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” – but not enough to stop me shelling out for a stack of them. Let’s see what conversations they [...]

The Gobo Show

By ⋅ May 17, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

My colleague Paolo continues to be a mine of fascinating information. Yesterday he told me the Italian word for an autocue or teleprompter is “gobo”. “It means ‘hunchback’,” he explained, miming how a holder of a set of large cue cards would hunch over a pack of the cards. The trigger for this odd conversation [...]

The Wisdom of Derren Brown

By ⋅ May 14, 2007 ⋅ 3 comments

Sat in front of the television show “Trick Or Treat” on Friday night, I watched as Derren Brown treated us to his own version of the opening anecdote from James Surowiekcki’s “The Wisdom of Crowds“. Surowiekcki recounts a story about British polymath Francis Galton, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin noted for his prolific intellect. At [...]

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