Year: 2012
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Doing Things Your Own Way
I somehow missed this, but it's a wonderful story. When he was fifteen, John Gurdon's Science teacher wrote on his school report: "…he will not listen, but will insist on doing his work in his own way. I believe he has ideas about becoming a Scientist; on his present showing this is quite ridiculous…" Last…
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Work On Stuff That Matters
"Money is like gas in the car — you need to pay attention or you’ll end up on the side of the road — but a well-lived life is not a tour of gas stations" Tim O'Reilly This is a great short interview with Tim O'Reilly. Well worth eleven minutes of your time. I've long…
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Communications Planning in 2013
The good people at WARC are keen to encourage people to start thinking early about planning themes for 2013 and so have asked me (along with a few other ad bloggers around the world) to put down a few thoughts on the subject. Tough to do justice to such a broad and forever shifting entity…
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Are We Living in a Low Innovation Age?
I gave a keynote last week at the rather wonderful Google Squared programme on the subject of technological disruption and chose to dedicate my latest column in New Media Age to the subject: “With so much written about digital and technological disruption we take it as read that we are living in an age of…
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Post Of The Month – September 2012 – The Winner
Noah Brier's excellent talk on the interest graph for brands took an early lead in this month's vote for Post Of The Month, and despite a good showing for Tim Malbon's post on lessons learned at MadeByMany, it proved an unassailable one. So well done Noah – you get the props of your blogging peers…
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Post Of The Month – September 2012 – The Vote
Thanks all for the nominations. Our shortlist this month is between: The Interest Graph for Brands from Noah Brier We Are Five Years Old. Here’s What We Learnt by Tim Malbon Graft and Craft: What Makes a Planner from Martin Weigel While I was Sleeping – A Tale of Modern ‘Manufacturing’ by Chris Thorpe Startup = Growth from…
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Is ‘Follow Your Passion’ Bad Career Advice?
I'm a big fan of Sir Ken Robinson (particularly the TED talk he did on how schools kill creativity which is the most watched of all time). His book The Element is a powerful evocation of how finding the point where your natural talent meets your personal passion can lead to high achievement and personal fulfillment in…
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Google Firestarters 6: Digital Storytelling And Video – The Event
Wednesday saw the great and the good of UK planning gather for our sixth (gosh, six events already) Google Firestarters event at Google HQ. We'd themed the event around digital storytelling and video, an increasingly important subject given the growth in content marketing, the abundance of new digital tools and ways to tell stories, and…
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How Movements Happen
There's a really interesting chapter of Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit (Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change) analysing the habits of societies and how social movements happen. Duhigg uses the example of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the mid 1950s which was sparked by Rosa Parks being arrested after refusing…