What it really means to be a 'Professional' & why you should know

The professional keeps his eye on the doughnut and not on the hole. He reminds himself it’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot

The REAL impact of Google+

is not from technology

As much as Google are a technology company, the products and services they create are based around keen human observation

and Google+ is no different

I have enjoyed using Google+ for some time now and observing the conversations between the technology focused, dedicated software using beta testing mountain dew drinking early adopters. It is not until I myself were able to invite others to join, whereby I could both create and fulfil circles which are as unique to me and those that I know within the circles.

This is something I have been doing for years, if you're reading this and you know me well. You know that I have a fond and some would say a rare ability to travel through life collecting and sharing people. This has been the centre of everything that I have ever done. I am but one person who has to collaborate and share in order to produce the creative work that I do. Outside of a monetary system where colleagues and friends have collaborated with me who will share in the profits. There are as many cases where the projects initiated as non-profit to ultimately become very profitable. Without circles of friendship and collaboration none of these would have been achieved.

Where Google+ reflects this model more so than any other social media platform is not in its technology. It's not out there like FriendFeed meets Skype and sort of like Facebook without the ability to 'like' Justin Bieber.

I do believe as it grows and more users adopt Google+ as a platform for both exploring and contextualising their friends, co-workers, followers, ex-girlfriends, family, potential investors, friends to go on the razz with. A key point here is that yes this is all achievable with the address book on a basic cellphone. This is an added feature to a product that started as a telephone. Google+ was built around this single concept.

It is my strong belief not that I am in anyway in favour of the 'social media guru' I just feel that for the first time, for a lot of people Google+ both asks and creates a platform for the user to differentiate one person to another.

Just how many of us have a circle called 'old friends and I no longer really speak with any more' or for some people it's 'ex-girlfriends' or others it's 'little black book'

Years ago when I was in Los Angeles working full-time I had a piece of software that ran through FileMaker pro that had been uniquely custom-built for the company that I worked for.

It was possibly the most convoluted and overbearing piece of CRM I have ever used.

It struggled to contextualise and visualise the way the different elements of social business circles overlapped and interactive. The founders of the company had seen value in this software because it was something that they were doing naturally for themselves in both their heads with their Rolodex.

The reason this was important was ultimately it was one of the main reasons the company always seen in the best light and for its time was one of the most successful companies on both sides of the pond.

Google+ is still a beta product so I am not too keen to review it as so many are. I do believe that Google+ will traverse into the mobile arena with smartphones and when it becomes a conduit for the ultimate form of communication for our species which is still speech.

Then Google+ will really start to separate the men from the boys and girls from the women

In not just yours but everybody's social circles

Ultimately Google+ with enough participation, could quite simply map out the entire hierarchy of the entire human race.

Whereabouts you sits within that hierarchy, will be defined by how you define your circles

As it always has done

Now it has a free online graphical user interface

We have not moved on much as a species from the courts of Florence

But, in so many ways technology has

What, Budweiser, The summer of 89 & my Grandfather taught me about Advertising

my Grandfather was an economist & professor at the LSE. He drove and was very proud of his Mini Clubman in 70's turd brown with the wooden runners along the back panels.

He worked with government and industry figures of the day, people who ran things or made things.

where all three of us agree is:

Sales & Marketing.

here's a good story about him that'll help to illustrate his and our points of view.

many, many years ago, i was failing at school ~ typical dyslexic with well above average IQ and still regarded by the system as illiterate and educationally sub normal.

my Grandfather, helped to coach me to pass my A-levels

he was very good at this

he also hated Advertising as a profession

he knew that, for all the money earned within the industry, the actual results seen within society were actually at a negative deficit, actually taking out more than they could ever put into the nations economy.

that was, his learned belief.

he also loved to drink beer, good old English beer

not, the imported brewed under licence kind

i was 18 into the Beastieboys, Thrasher Magazine and looking forward to being a runner at AMV ~ and drinking Budweiser

it was 1989

after a tutoring session, in the early evening my Grandfather would take me for a beer in a pub along St. Giles in Oxford

where they also sold Budweiser

and his local beer

my pint cost almost twice as much as his

his was sold in barrels by the local brewery

the pub landlord made a profit, so did the brewery ~ very simple mark up math

my pint, included the cost of the nationwide TV, press and outdoor campaign

my Grandfather, believed that the extra cost came from the delivery, multiple profit partners and marketing

so in effect, (he was paying) the extra cost for a sub standard product that i wanted because of the marketing

had the product been substantially better, then maybe the additional cost could be bared

but no, to my Grandfather, is wasn't even imported American beer (he was a big fan of Boston Ales, when in Boston)

so my first lesson about advertising was from an Economist

who questioned everything, from a mathematic stand point

it was, what he did

years later, I know do the same

whats the actual value of answering the brief for all concerned

if it's just the agency, then the briefs very, very wrong

imagine spending a million pounds only to receive two hundred thousand pounds of actual work?

now there's a brief for us all….

Here’s how to see the location data your iPhone has been logging

don't use this to find out where your ex-girlfriend really was last weekend....

That location data that is stored both on your iPhone and backed up to your computer through iTunes is available for you by using a little program > here

This is what my'n looked like for England & Wales, yes & a lot of Dorset....

Screen_shot_2011-04-20_at_21

 

my advice to Albion West Coast

if you figure this post out, you'll figure LA out

How Steve Jobs picks a washer/dryer

“We didn’t have a very good one so we spent a little time looking at them,” he told contributing editor Gary Isaac Wolf. “It turns out that the Americans make washers and dryers all wrong. The Europeans make them much better – but they take twice as long to do clothes! It turns out that they wash them with about a quarter as much water and your clothes end up with a lot less detergent on them. Most important, they don’t trash your clothes.They use a lot less soap, a lot less water, but they come out much cleaner, much softer, and they last a lot longer. “We spent some time in our family talking about what’s the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family.

Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table. We’d get around to that old washer-dryer discussion. And the talk was about design.”

Two weeks of discussions to choose a washing machine?

That’s life in the Jobs household. (He opted for Miele in the end, adding, “I got more thrill out of them than I have out of any piece of high tech in years.”) So how does he justify deliberating for so long? Well interestingly he compared it to a phone – an essential item, but something people don’t have time to spend figuring out.

“You just don’t have time to learn this stuff, and everything’s getting more complicated.” So he simplified it all with the original iPhone, and the mobile landscape changed forever. If Apple made washing machines, you can bet they’d be the easiest to use in the world. I didn’t remember seeing that one way back when but it sounds about right.

via ~ From a 1996 Wired piece as told by ElectricPig.co.uk

how to make great Advertising campaigns via an 8th graders science fair project

just do absolutely everything she says, to the letter and you'll be good enough to maybe work at Albion....

only kidding Nick

not really

well

maybe

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