Centre for Narrative Leadership: excellent two day event

December 14, 2008 By 1 Comment

Excellent food, great ideas and wonderful company at the Centre for Narrative Leadership ‘Cathedrals in the Heart’ 2 day event

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by Julian Burton (artist and change consultant) to spend 2 days at the CNL event based at Hawkwood College in Stroud.

Not sure what to expect, I went along because of our shared interest in the power of storytelling in business leadership. The event turned out to be a collection of lovely people all dedicated in some way to creating deep and significant change in their lives and the wider world. We were a varied group of storytellers, bards, poets, peformers and corporate coaches held in a perfectly structured and facilitated space to explore the areas that interested us as a group.

The location was the tranquil settings of Hawkwook with it’s old-fashioned, wholesome charm. There were books everywhere and barely a hint of modern technology. Day 1 concluded with a ‘ceilidh’ – people telling stories, reciting poems and all of us singing carols in rounds.

Day two created some ‘open space’ where we explored some issues that mattered to us. I invited people to collaborate with a storyteller friend of mine, Caroline Keane, on a story telling podcast using the mobile phone as the communication vehicle. The site has just started at www.stonecarrier.org.uk (early days but it’s off the ground!).

Whenever you bring together lovely, real people in a peaceful, nurturing space and hold them confidently and lightly with a grounding sense of purpose you get magic. Geoff Mead’s ‘Centre for Narrative Leadership’ creates that magic – and by the end of the event, I realised that almost by accident, I’d spent two days feeding my heart, not my intellect.

Everywhere I go at the moment it seems like when you scratch the surface, people long for change – for something bigger than just them; for something more meaningful in their lives than the inexorable path to environmental, financial and spiritual bankruptcy we seem to be on. If you’re looking for a place to explore that yearning, CNL is a good place to start.

[Geoff - if you're reading this a) thanks for a great couple of days and b) please get involved with www.stonecarrier.org.uk and c) hurry up and get your site at the top of Google for 'centre for narrative leadership'. Anything I can do to help, please just get in touch]

Filed Under: change Tagged With: , , , ,

The Bamboo Tree – Clare’s choice of reading

December 12, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Clare reading Donal O’Leary’s ‘The Bamboo Tree’ at Elizabeth Finn Care’s Christmas concert this week

Imagine reading in front of 500 people. Scary.

Imagine doing it immediately after James Fox, Kate Adie, David Astor and Joanna Lumley.

That’s what Clare did this week at the Elizabeth Finn Care Christmas Concert in London. I think I was more nervous than her.

As it happens, she was great and the piece she read – The Bamboo Tree – by Donal O’Leary was beautiful; a real breath of fresh air into the traditional Christmas stories.

Afterwards, she met the celebs and was introduced to HRH The Duchess of Gloucester. The choir and the soloists were sublime – the true sound of Christmas as we remember it.

Filed Under: news Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Best mp3 recorder – mAudio Microtrack.

December 12, 2008 By 2 Comments

mAudio’s Microtrack has proved to be the best mp3 recorder for sound, money and longevity

. click to listen

This week, I took our trusty old mAudio Microtrack I to record a Christmas Carol concert at St. Luke’s church in London. There was no fancy set up – just the natural ambient sound and the Microtrack with it’s little plug-in mic.

I recorded this in mp3 format, 44.1Khz at 192 bits. Since then, it’s been edited and recompressed as an mp3 and uploaded.

The machine is over two years old now and still giving great service. Occasionally it locks on saving a file but so far never loses the file it was saving. The battery was never great – so I velcro a 4xAA usb battery pack onto it. That gives me as much battery as I want to match the 33 hours of top quality mp3 recording.

It’s been a seriously good unit. It’s done seminars, conferences, outside broadcasts, podcasts, video soundtracks, panel discussions… you name it. So good, in fact, that I’ve not even been able to find a reason to buy the next generation Microtrack.

Filed Under: review, WOW! Tagged With: , , , ,

Google. Earth. Perspective.

December 9, 2008 By Leave a Comment

This picture puts today’s Google Trends into a kind of perspective.

The Earth pictured from space – as seen by the US Apollo astronauts in the early 1970s (above).

Below is the Earth as seen by Google Trends – the top 100 US Google searches – Dec 9th 2008:

“3. visanthe shiancoe”

“4. visanthe shiancoe locker room”

“5. vishante shiancoe”

“6. shiancoe naked”

“26. shiancoe video”

“27. visanthe shiancoe site youtube.com”

“34. shiancoe penis”

“38. shiancoe minnesota vikings”

“50. shiancoe exposed”

“59. shiancoe towel”

“65. vikings’ shiancoe shown on tv barely wearing towel”

“74. visanthe shiancoe naked video”

“79. shiancoe picture“

Filed Under: history, WOW! Tagged With: , , ,

Lottery results: Sat 6th December

December 7, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Lottery results: 10 12 20 37 39 48 (31)

I won a tenner.  Wow.  How about you?

And what about that recent ad campaign?  That thinly-veiled ‘positive thinking’ nonsense about people who are optimistic; people who think big; you know, lottery kind of people…

I’d love to make another version of that ad.  One where everybody’s hoping to fix their lives with a vast pile of money that could help them escape from the present moment; that would assist them not accepting who they actually were; one that would enable them to become someone… special… worthwhile… beautiful…

Filed Under: WOW! Tagged With: , ,

Setting up a forum: top three reputation management pitfalls

December 6, 2008 By Leave a Comment

3 easy ways to undermine your reputation when you set up an online forum

1) Set up a forum and then leave it empty. An empty forum will stay empty. It takes an huge amount of effort to populate a forum and breath enough life into it for it to stand on its own two feet so unless you have the energy and commitment, don’t start it. An empty forum is like tumbleweed blowing through your site.

2) Fail to notice that your only contributor is an anal sex obsessed transvestite spammer. Wonder why no-one’s checking into your forum? Uncontrolled spam kills forums stone dead.

3) Allow conflict to break out on your forum. Tempting, because it attracts viewers but unless you’re a guru of self-control and a master of clean communication, you’ll be waltzing into a minefield from which nobody is likely to emerge unscathed. Harsh, but true, I’m afraid – no matter how right you think you are.

Filed Under: ORM Tagged With: , , , , ,

Is podcasting a good business to get into?

December 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment

‘Is podcasting a good business?’ a student asked me in a phone interview

An old friend of mine, Doug Lyon, who now teaches at the University in Brighton called the other day to ask if one of his students could interview me over the phone about podcasting.

‘So… is podcasting a good business to get into?’ asked Tom towards the end of the interview.

Good question, kid.

“No” I replied. “Podcasting as a business is a non-starter. Business owners don’t wake up thinking ‘aha, I need a podcast’. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t loads of ways that the same skill set can’t be put to work solving some real issue or problem…”

The problem with ‘podcasting’ is that its inherently self-obsessed – thinking and talking more about itself than about other peoples’ problems. Why wouldn’t it be when the word, first and foremost, is a marketing device for Apple?

When we talk about ‘podcasting’ we’re playing into a marketing loop, doing the bidding of the genius who connected the concept of sending audio and video over the web to their own particular plastic gizmo.

‘Podcasting’, I can tell you authoritatively (ok, reasonably authoritatively since we’ve been doing it for 2 1/2 years) is a non-starter in business terms.

Get over it.

What is a starter, though, is being free enough from the limiting, Apple-serving label to spot where delivering audio & video online can fit into a business’s marketing strategy.

Don’t get me wrong. The potential for ‘podcasting’ is immense. In fact, if anything what we now call ‘podcasting’ would better be called ‘internet radio’ and what we now call ‘internet radio’ (a thing that too often tries to replicate real-world radio) should be done away with altogether.

Why isn’t everyone using this technology then? Because when we’ve outgrown the silly brand-centric name and the ‘new technology’ introspection we’re still left with a problem that hasn’t changed throughout history – which is that creating content worth consuming is just plain hard to do, and always will be.

Filed Under: business insight Tagged With: , , , ,

Oneayearcampaign.com: read this UKBF thread first

December 2, 2008 By Leave a Comment

oneayearcampaign.com puts its reputation on the line in UK Business Forum thread

I’ve long been a critic of online directory schemes promising increased business. I feel like the James Randi of the internet at times, driven to debunk people exploiting other peoples’ ignorance about online marketing. “What Google visibility?” I like to ask. “Why are your site visitors going to come to my site?” I’m partial to enquiring.

One project I wanted to fire these questions at is oneayearcampaign.com – a site that aims to take 10% in exchange for new business it creates for you. Why would you pay to advertise with this untested website? Because the owner claims she will give 10% of her earnings to ‘her favourite charities’.  At first glance, it’s appears to be a sweet idea.

Siobhan Jones of oneayearcampaign.com posted in UKBF offering free advertising to the first 30 UKBF members. The first few people thought it was a nice idea. Then along came Ling with a few tricky questions of her own resulting in this monster of a thread - and a masterpiece of online reputation (mis?)management for all involved.

This thread is so revealing I wouldn’t be surprised if they deleted it soon – so hurry up, put the kettle on and get comfortable; this is worth an hour of your life. You might learn how not to do a lot of things. Your business may even thank you for it.

Filed Under: what do you think?, WOW! Tagged With: , , , ,

tjformal bridal, prom and tuxedo – so glad you benefit from my content

December 2, 2008 By Leave a Comment

So pleased that TJFormal – a bridal, prom and tux shop in the US – benefits from my content!

This is why the internet has no future, folks. I don’t even know exactly what’s happened here – so I’ll just tell as I see it.

I write blog content. That content gets lifted and connected with a series of different URLs which – when clicked – all lead me, via some fleeting glimpse of some kind of aggregator / portal thing (see I don’t even know the words for it) called Shop Online to TJFormal in the USA.

I’ll declare right now that I don’t know whether you know that some of your traffic comes from my content.

TJFormal USA, if you’re reading this, I don’t know your set up. Maybe you’ve signed up to Shop Online and part of the deal is they promise you increased traffic. And since the URLs in the picture above all route through ShopOnline

maybe they’re responsible for lifting my blog content and using it to bring you customers. Maybe some complete stranger is doing it for no other reason than they can. Who knows? I don’t. All I can tell you is what it looks like. Spammy.

What I do know is that it uses my content to drive traffic to you – oh, and that the traffic you get from that is pretty worthless.

Why? Because it’s unqualified, it’s overseas and because ironically, the post it’s lifted from is all about online scamming :-)

Funny how the internet works.

Filed Under: GRRRR!!! Tagged With: , , ,

Wacky New Website for Entrepreneurs and Business Startups

December 2, 2008 By Leave a Comment

EnterpriseCafe.tv is now open, serving help and advice for would-be entrepreneurs and business startups

Designed by ‘mu:kaumedia (using the same Brian Gardner template as this site), Iain Scott’s new entrepreneur website launches just at the moment when recession starts to bite in the South West UK.  The site,  www.enterprisecafe.tv, features his off-the-wall video podcast, a regular blog plus his kilted Enterprise Agony Uncle advice line.

With more job losses in Cornwall announced last night, more and more people are going to be looking at the option of setting up their own business as an alternative to job-hunting in a squeezed economic climate. Google search volumes are starting to climb for phrases that include terms like ‘redundancy’ and ‘unemployment’.

The site is in its infancy but it’s open for business and looking to help people think inventively, creatively and resourcefully about starting out in business – and develop the confidence to do it.

Filed Under: news Tagged With: , , , ,
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