novel idea

Blackwell's on Charing Cross Road has just installed an expresso book machine that will print you a book on demand while you wait. How very two point oh.

on failure & madness

 

Zorba: Damn it boss, I like you too much not to say it. You've got everything except one thing: madness. A man needs a little madness or else... 

Basil: Or else? 

Zorba: He never dares cut the rope and be free.

Zorba and the Greek.

my new micro-payment idea

It's an oyster card elastic banded to an ipod touch. Oyster card technology is pretty small in fact so it wouldn't take much to put the chip inside the ipod and do away with the elastic band. Then once that was up and running you'd have a brand new payment channel, the best thing since the invention of visa card (or the invention of visa card with a built in oyster card).

Think about it, apple are making a mint from micro-payments on music and apps with itunes at the minute and people are getting more and more comfortable with these transactions (I've personally spent over £30 in £10 or less transactions on itunes in the last 30 days). And Oyster has the very realistic potential to expand out of purely London travel transactions into a whole host of small to mid size payments just has has happened with Hong Kong's Octapus card. Like Oyster have just started to do with Evening Standard offers.

And combining both would also give users the opportunity to life track their spending via specific applications like nike+ but for things you buy. Which would be fascinating I think.

what brands can learn from the simon bolivar youth orchestra

I went to see various groups from the simon bolivar youth orchestra this week. So here's what brands can learn from the simon bolivar youth orchestra...

The simon bolivar orchestra.

The simon bolivar brass ensemble.

The simon bolivar string quartet.

Teams come in various sizes, whole companies, departments and small groups. All can deliver results greater than the sum of their parts when they're working well together.

An inspiration leader will get you places.

And having a great system in place will let you grow.

That's all from what brands can learn from the simon bolivar youth orchestra.

snap shot of things to come

Here's something I think we'll be seeing more and more of. Micro transactions via Oyster cards and getting a better value deals for doing so. Hong Kong's Octopus card is already streets ahead in this area.

I was reading a really interesting piece in the RSA Journal about consumers differing behaviours in spending with cash or card. People are far more frivolous when it comes to non-cash transactions basically. The above system can take full advantage of this, especially with micro payments, to get consumer spending going again.

where the puck are things going?

One of my favourite metaphors at the minute is about forecasting and ice hockey. It goes 'the best ice hockey players skate to where the puck is going to, not where it is'. With that in mind I went off to this thing at the RSA on Wednesday night to try and find out where the pucks going.

The 3 ways to monetise on the internet: transactions, subscriptions and sponsorship. To me it looks like the biggest area of growth in these 3 is subscriptions. A milk man's salary is paid for by subscriptions. Spotify is a subscription based model, as is Album Club as is using an Oyster card as is a lot more of the video content on i-tunes these days. Subscriptions let you turn short term customers into long term customers, and let you and let you lock in your loyalists. Is there anything you can offer as a subscription?

Events are bigger than pre-produced conent. The man from i-Player said that they're seeing more future in events based content (football games, Obama speeches, olympics coverage) than traditional pre-produced content like films and tv series's. Fundamentally because the former is a lot harder to pirate and duplicate than the later. The same argument seems true for music where live concerts are now overtaking traditional CD sales as artists main revenue streams (again it's a lot harder to pirate a concert). There's also interesting conitations of society 'going live' with twitter's argument that their search is a live based search where as google's in an archived version.

Anyone fancy starting up an events subscriptions business?

the lets be human beings show

Here's a lets be human beings 'best of the blog' presentation I gave to the students of Bucks New University on Friday as part of my being paired up with a medium sized shire. It's missing a couple of videos and won't mean much at all without me standing next to it waffling. Let me know if you'd be interested in having me stand next to it and waffling and we might be able to sort something out.

people talking about their jobs

I went to this how to find a job you love thing last night. The speakers were a scientist, motivational speaker, writer, furniture maker, guerilla gardener/ advertising accounts man and social entrepreneur. Here's some stuff I picked up.

The scientist liked his job because he's in a gang. Gangs are good. He's also doing some really interesting research into self healing materials (materials that fix themselves when broke like your skin) and setting up a materials library.

The motivational speaker makes 130k a year motivating people with lots of money but not so much motivation. She told a story about fixing a team who weren't getting on very well with each other by getting them all to tell each other why they're great. She made a good point that we only tend to genuinely say why we think someone is great when we have to sign their leaving cards or when the die. She seemed like a mum to business people with lots of educational intelligence but not so much emotional intelligence. The fact that she's doing so well out of it says a lot about business's I think.

The guerilla gardener now works 3 days a week in advertising for a decent salary and spends the other 4 throwing seeds about and planting stuff. He seemed pretty happy about this.

The writer made 290k from his books last year. He likes writing books that capture a current social mood or trend or aspect of society that has otherwise been undocumented. Like work or status or travel or love. He compared this to 'catching a butterfly'. I liked his turn of phrase. I think blogging can be a bit like butterfly catching sometimes.

And finally my favourite was the French furniture maker. He's set up his own custom made furniture making shop on Brick Lane where he has broken the norm of having to have a separate factory, warehouse and retail outlet and put them all together in one small place. He said his business plan is a book they keep called 'all the mistakes we have made', once this book is full up he'll be able to open other shops using the same concept but skipping the mistakes. He also told a nice story about the moment he most felt things were coming together when one of his customers brought a friend to his shop and gave them a tour of how the concept works. He said that the customer was describing the shop and concept to his friend as if it was his own though, as if by finding it he had taken some ownership of it like a business angel. This is probably customer advocacy nirvana. 

He was also wearing shoes covered in saw dust, which I liked.