February 28, 2006
highly-paid corporate drone
Hugh MacLeod
I'm a cartoonist.
I sell limited-edition prints.
I wrote a book.
I'm CEO of Stormhoek USA, which markets South African wine in the States.
I also draw private commissions.
Prints |
Opening | Current |
|---|---|---|
Bluetrain |
$900 | |
We Need to Talk |
$650 | |
Portfolio #2 |
$300 | |
NY NY |
$275 |
Archive for February, 2006
” The 34-minute time and expense app — thingamy”
For the last few months, I’ve been helping Sigurd Rinde market his software, “Thingamy”.
Dennis Howlett just took it for a test drive and posted his thoughts:
Last week I set Sigurd Rinde the challenge of creating a time and expense application. I didn
tecnorati “favorite” list
Technorati has a new Top 100 list, based on people’s “favorites”. I’m Number 24 [for now], apparently. Neat.
near cannes
I’m writing this from Antibes [near Cannes] in the South of France.
Here on business. Long Story.
So… Anybody want to buy a yacht?
[And while we’re on a French theme:] Here’s a podcast from Mardi Gras, put together by famed New Orleans blogger, Brian Oberkirch.
hello, jeremy
I live nowhere near Dallas. But if I did, I would call Jeremy over at TopGeeks every time my computer needed fixing. I have never met Jeremy; in fact up until about five minutes ago I had never even heard of him. But thanks to this blog post Jeremy gets all my future Dallas business, if and when etc.
[Insert new “Power of Blogs” thought here.]
“interpublic, where are your blogs?”
Great post from MarketingMonger:
Interpublic Group. 91 companies. $6 billion in annual revenues. 43,000 employees. 3 corporate blogs.
Great design still matters. So does branding. And pr. And marketing. And these companies do all those things very well.
But social media is coming and it’s going to affect them and their clients.
So how come advertising agencies aren’t getting into blogging? I’ve said it many times before:
Blogging, when done correctly, is CHEAP and EASY. Ad agencies are in the business of selling stuff that is NEITHER.
[Bonus Link:] I love this tagline for The Obligatory Blog:
These days, if you run a software company, you have to have a Blog. This is mine.
“geo-localization of tags”
Jon Husband, of “Wirearchy” fame made an interesting point recently in the gapingvoid comments:
Blogging will get much more *local* in the next few years, in my opinion, in a range of interesting ways, and then one of the questions will be how to get global microbrands to become more effective and responsive on the local level and in local ways.
This issue may become, for blogging, the equivalent of the *centralization / decentralization* pendulum swing issue that larger organizations continually re-visit as their markets or the org’s capabilities change.
Watch for geo-localization of tags.
Thoughts?
heiko’s new job
Heiko Hebig, my favorite German blogger, no longer works for Six Apart. Seems he has this awesome new job at Burda.
In order to maximize these efforts, we are currently in the process of setting up “Burda Labs”. At this stage “Burda Labs” is a working title for a small team of experts from various fields of expertise. The aim of this operation (call it skunksworks if you buy into conspiration theory) is to connect the unexpected. Now what does that mean? Honestly, I don’t know. Not yet. At this stage it’s way too early to predict the outcome.
Godspeed, Heiko!
February 26, 2006
shaveblog
Corey Greenberg, a presenter on NBC’s Today Show, has a blog devoted to old-fashioned gentleman’s shaving:
The thing is, I got such a good shave with the Israeli blade I kept shaving with it all week. I get scary-close shaves with the Swedes, but in the this dry winter weather they can be a tad too much for my puss. The underside of my chin has been feeling kind of raw lately, but man, what faceturbatory shaves I get from these Swedes loaded in my 40’s Gillette Super Speeds. I play with myself all day long, stroking my chin and cheeks and marvelling at the total lack of feelable stubble.
Corey and I were college buddies. Wicked smart, is he.
more on the 100 dinners…
Right now I’m getting very excited about the Stormhoek “100 Dinners” idea.
We’ll supply the wine, the bloggers supply the people and the conversation. The events don’t have to be big, or at a fancy place, we imagine that they could be anywhere– a bar, a porch, a beach, park, whatever, so don’t limit yourself to a restaurant.
Why am I getting so excited?
1. How about if it scaled? How about instead of doing a hundred dinners as a one-off, it becomes an ongoing thing? Hundereds and hundreds of blogger dinners [Thousands?] over the next couple of years?
2. How about if the idea really gelled with everybody, and suddenly having Stormhoek at a blogger dinner came pretty standard, as ubiquitous as say, wifi at a Mashup?
3. How about if it worked well enough that we could justify spending ALL our marketing budget on the dinners, and forget about all the other options– advertising, in-store promo’s, product placement and all the other marketing methods I utterly despise?
I can think of worse way to make a living.
When I launched the whole Stormhoek thing, I said:
Will the idea-virus spread far enough that suddenly, instead of one or two people knowing about the wine, suddenly tens of thousands of smart connected people in the UK know about it, and are talking about it?
Is that enough to launch a national brand?
If it isn’t, well, no great loss. We will have gotten some PR out of it, and maybe a few long-term Stormhoek customers out of the blogosphere.
But if it is, then I’m thinking, Holy Shit, what we’re doing might put a lot of traditional ad agencies out of business. Seriously.
What? Using the blogosphere to launch a national wine brand… and nothing else? Puting ad agencies out of business? Huh?
I’ll admit it– when this whole idea began it seemed very “out there”.
But since The Telegraph article came out now I’m starting to think, Holy Shit, this is actually starting to work.
And that’s scary. In a good way.
Next steps?
stormhoek in the sunday telegraph
Nick Dymoke-Marr, the big cheese at Stormhoek just got a big article written about him and this whole Stormhoek blogospheric thing in the business section of The Sunday Telegraph, on of the big UK national papers:
Last May, six months after Stormhoek launched, Dymoke-Marr despatched a bottle of his mid-price Sauvignon Blanc to 150 of the UK’s most frantic-fingered “bloggers”, the burgeoning community of internet diarists.
It was a plan that didn’t lack bottle. After all, since their emergence at the end of the 1990s, bloggers have become a nightmare for businesses the world over. Microsoft, Tesco and McDonald’s have all fallen victim to vicious blogs written by irate customers or seething employees.
But Dymoke-Marr’s gamble elicited barely a sour grape. “We were just really honest,” he says.
“We didn’t say we were selling the best wine in South Africa. We just said: ‘Here’s a nice wine, reasonably priced, tell us what you think.’”
The bloggers got to work, tapping away about the virtues of the vino. Estimates of how many bloggers there are around the world range from 15m to 30m. Up to 80,000 blogs are thought to be started each day. If you had punched Stormhoek into Google last June, 500 references would have popped up. That figure stood at about 85,000 last week.
Rock on, Nick. Nice to see Big Media finally starting to pick up on it.
That being said, I’m more interested in the US launch these days; in particular the “100 Dinners” idea. If you have an idea for that, please <a href=“http://www.thehughpage.com/Stormhoek” onclick=“javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outbound/article/www.thehughpage.com’);“s_100_Geek_Dinners_in_100_Days”>sign up on the wiki and/or send me an e-mail. Thanks.
February 25, 2006
preston reed is blogging.
The result of a successful composition should be satisfying, entertaining, involving, and, on some level, edifying, whether it be long or short, simple or complicated, easy to listen to or not. Some compositions require multiple listenings to digest and enjoy. Some are instantly pleasing. But there will always be something that feels right — natural, organic, alive — about a good composition.
A good composition gives back energy. It continues to evolve inside the listener over time.
[Live-streaming music samples can be found here. My fave track is one called “Flatonia,” but that’s just me.]
[Here’s an AMAZING hour-long video of Preston performing live at The Kennedy Center. Watch his technique. Wow.]
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I thought legendary acoustic guitarist, Preston Reed, should start a blog:
What Preston realised is that what paid his bills wasn’t percentages on record sales, but the relationship he had with his audience.
So he and his wife built up a nice wee “Global Microbrand”, which includes lots of playing, lots of touring, lots of real time connection with people who dig his work.
Like I said, this conversation was pretty seminal. Turns out what a lot of bloggers are now trying to do online, Preston was already trying to do the same via live music. His philosophy certainly helped confirm what I was trying to do with my work, back in those early blogging days– bypassing big media, building one’s own sovereignty from the ground up etc. Even though I’m not a musician, his hands-on M.O. proved to be a real long-term inspiration for me.
So I wrote him an e-mail earlier today, telling him he’d be a perfect candidate to bring some music into the Blogosphere. Maybe I get him to play live at a Geek Dinner, blog confab or something. Just an idea.
A few phone calls later, he was on the case.
Rock on.
February 24, 2006
everybody wants love
Rick Segal’s new V.C. idea, as told by Shel:
He’s a believer in micro financing and has become convinced that small investments spread over a large number of entrepreneurs with the right talent could be very lucrative for the right investors.
gender politics
A wee spat between Gia and Anina seems to have broken out. I know and like them both, so I’m staying WELL out of it.
Still, it’s good to see gender politics entering the Blogosphere– it’s a remarkably asexual place, by and large. Maybe that needs to change.
kiwi something
Jack Yan is trying to launch a global fashion magazine brand not from Paris or New York, but from New Zealand.
That’s right; New Zealand. Hey, with the internet, anything’s possible.
stormhoek cartoon
Looks like Stormhoek’s marketing is starting to work. Heh.
[Note to self: Is Guy Kawasaki a wine drinker? Is he planning on throwing any Web 2.0 parties?]
The one thing I’m REALLY glad that me and the Stormhoek folk did is, when we started the first European wine promo back in the summer, we made it available to ALL bloggers, regardless of “influence” and/or traffic.
It made it a lot more interesting and fun than the usual “Let’s give out some freebies to some A-Listers and start some buzz” routine.
Meanwhile, the Stormhoek 100 geek dinners thing is up to 39 parties. We want to get the number up to 100. If you have a interesting “Web 2.0″ event coming up, large or small, Stormheok would perhaps like to sponsor it. Thanks.
malcolm gladwell has a blog
“Tipping Point” and “Blink Author, Malcolm Gladwell has started a blog. Thanks to Steve Rubel for the pointer.
biz school questions
[PS: Yes, the new M-Tablet PC drawings were all drawn in the last 24 hours.]
A business studies student just sent me the following questions, for his class. Anybody else want to have a shot at answering?
Below are some questions I had. Please consider them guidelines only. Feel free to add anything that you think might help.
Questions:
1) How would you describe your profession/work? What do you do (for money)?
2) What exactly is a
quality online content experiences are best!
Dennis Howlett does the great job of explaining just why traditional, paid media just-doesn’t-get-it:
red eye
[PS:] Yes, I’m enjoying my new Motion Computing Tablet P.C.
” The 34-minute time and expense app — thingamy”
For the last few months, I’ve been helping Sigurd Rinde market his software, “Thingamy”.
Dennis Howlett just took it for a test drive and posted his thoughts:
Last week I set Sigurd Rinde the challenge of creating a time and expense application. I didn
tecnorati “favorite” list
Technorati has a new Top 100 list, based on people’s “favorites”. I’m Number 24 [for now], apparently. Neat.
near cannes
I’m writing this from Antibes [near Cannes] in the South of France.
Here on business. Long Story.
So… Anybody want to buy a yacht?
[And while we’re on a French theme:] Here’s a podcast from Mardi Gras, put together by famed New Orleans blogger, Brian Oberkirch.
hello, jeremy
I live nowhere near Dallas. But if I did, I would call Jeremy over at TopGeeks every time my computer needed fixing. I have never met Jeremy; in fact up until about five minutes ago I had never even heard of him. But thanks to this blog post Jeremy gets all my future Dallas business, if and when etc.
[Insert new “Power of Blogs” thought here.]
“interpublic, where are your blogs?”
Great post from MarketingMonger:
Interpublic Group. 91 companies. $6 billion in annual revenues. 43,000 employees. 3 corporate blogs.
Great design still matters. So does branding. And pr. And marketing. And these companies do all those things very well.
But social media is coming and it’s going to affect them and their clients.
So how come advertising agencies aren’t getting into blogging? I’ve said it many times before:
Blogging, when done correctly, is CHEAP and EASY. Ad agencies are in the business of selling stuff that is NEITHER.
[Bonus Link:] I love this tagline for The Obligatory Blog:
These days, if you run a software company, you have to have a Blog. This is mine.
“geo-localization of tags”
Jon Husband, of “Wirearchy” fame made an interesting point recently in the gapingvoid comments:
Blogging will get much more *local* in the next few years, in my opinion, in a range of interesting ways, and then one of the questions will be how to get global microbrands to become more effective and responsive on the local level and in local ways.
This issue may become, for blogging, the equivalent of the *centralization / decentralization* pendulum swing issue that larger organizations continually re-visit as their markets or the org’s capabilities change.
Watch for geo-localization of tags.
Thoughts?
heiko’s new job
Heiko Hebig, my favorite German blogger, no longer works for Six Apart. Seems he has this awesome new job at Burda.
In order to maximize these efforts, we are currently in the process of setting up “Burda Labs”. At this stage “Burda Labs” is a working title for a small team of experts from various fields of expertise. The aim of this operation (call it skunksworks if you buy into conspiration theory) is to connect the unexpected. Now what does that mean? Honestly, I don’t know. Not yet. At this stage it’s way too early to predict the outcome.
Godspeed, Heiko!
February 26, 2006
shaveblog
Corey Greenberg, a presenter on NBC’s Today Show, has a blog devoted to old-fashioned gentleman’s shaving:
The thing is, I got such a good shave with the Israeli blade I kept shaving with it all week. I get scary-close shaves with the Swedes, but in the this dry winter weather they can be a tad too much for my puss. The underside of my chin has been feeling kind of raw lately, but man, what faceturbatory shaves I get from these Swedes loaded in my 40’s Gillette Super Speeds. I play with myself all day long, stroking my chin and cheeks and marvelling at the total lack of feelable stubble.
Corey and I were college buddies. Wicked smart, is he.
more on the 100 dinners…
Right now I’m getting very excited about the Stormhoek “100 Dinners” idea.
We’ll supply the wine, the bloggers supply the people and the conversation. The events don’t have to be big, or at a fancy place, we imagine that they could be anywhere– a bar, a porch, a beach, park, whatever, so don’t limit yourself to a restaurant.
Why am I getting so excited?
1. How about if it scaled? How about instead of doing a hundred dinners as a one-off, it becomes an ongoing thing? Hundereds and hundreds of blogger dinners [Thousands?] over the next couple of years?
2. How about if the idea really gelled with everybody, and suddenly having Stormhoek at a blogger dinner came pretty standard, as ubiquitous as say, wifi at a Mashup?
3. How about if it worked well enough that we could justify spending ALL our marketing budget on the dinners, and forget about all the other options– advertising, in-store promo’s, product placement and all the other marketing methods I utterly despise?
I can think of worse way to make a living.
When I launched the whole Stormhoek thing, I said:
Will the idea-virus spread far enough that suddenly, instead of one or two people knowing about the wine, suddenly tens of thousands of smart connected people in the UK know about it, and are talking about it?
Is that enough to launch a national brand?
If it isn’t, well, no great loss. We will have gotten some PR out of it, and maybe a few long-term Stormhoek customers out of the blogosphere.
But if it is, then I’m thinking, Holy Shit, what we’re doing might put a lot of traditional ad agencies out of business. Seriously.
What? Using the blogosphere to launch a national wine brand… and nothing else? Puting ad agencies out of business? Huh?
I’ll admit it– when this whole idea began it seemed very “out there”.
But since The Telegraph article came out now I’m starting to think, Holy Shit, this is actually starting to work.
And that’s scary. In a good way.
Next steps?
stormhoek in the sunday telegraph
Nick Dymoke-Marr, the big cheese at Stormhoek just got a big article written about him and this whole Stormhoek blogospheric thing in the business section of The Sunday Telegraph, on of the big UK national papers:
Last May, six months after Stormhoek launched, Dymoke-Marr despatched a bottle of his mid-price Sauvignon Blanc to 150 of the UK’s most frantic-fingered “bloggers”, the burgeoning community of internet diarists.
It was a plan that didn’t lack bottle. After all, since their emergence at the end of the 1990s, bloggers have become a nightmare for businesses the world over. Microsoft, Tesco and McDonald’s have all fallen victim to vicious blogs written by irate customers or seething employees.
But Dymoke-Marr’s gamble elicited barely a sour grape. “We were just really honest,” he says.
“We didn’t say we were selling the best wine in South Africa. We just said: ‘Here’s a nice wine, reasonably priced, tell us what you think.’”
The bloggers got to work, tapping away about the virtues of the vino. Estimates of how many bloggers there are around the world range from 15m to 30m. Up to 80,000 blogs are thought to be started each day. If you had punched Stormhoek into Google last June, 500 references would have popped up. That figure stood at about 85,000 last week.
Rock on, Nick. Nice to see Big Media finally starting to pick up on it.
That being said, I’m more interested in the US launch these days; in particular the “100 Dinners” idea. If you have an idea for that, please <a href=“http://www.thehughpage.com/Stormhoek” onclick=“javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/outbound/article/www.thehughpage.com’);“s_100_Geek_Dinners_in_100_Days”>sign up on the wiki and/or send me an e-mail. Thanks.
February 25, 2006
preston reed is blogging.
The result of a successful composition should be satisfying, entertaining, involving, and, on some level, edifying, whether it be long or short, simple or complicated, easy to listen to or not. Some compositions require multiple listenings to digest and enjoy. Some are instantly pleasing. But there will always be something that feels right — natural, organic, alive — about a good composition.
A good composition gives back energy. It continues to evolve inside the listener over time.
[Live-streaming music samples can be found here. My fave track is one called “Flatonia,” but that’s just me.]
[Here’s an AMAZING hour-long video of Preston performing live at The Kennedy Center. Watch his technique. Wow.]
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I thought legendary acoustic guitarist, Preston Reed, should start a blog:
What Preston realised is that what paid his bills wasn’t percentages on record sales, but the relationship he had with his audience.
So he and his wife built up a nice wee “Global Microbrand”, which includes lots of playing, lots of touring, lots of real time connection with people who dig his work.
Like I said, this conversation was pretty seminal. Turns out what a lot of bloggers are now trying to do online, Preston was already trying to do the same via live music. His philosophy certainly helped confirm what I was trying to do with my work, back in those early blogging days– bypassing big media, building one’s own sovereignty from the ground up etc. Even though I’m not a musician, his hands-on M.O. proved to be a real long-term inspiration for me.
So I wrote him an e-mail earlier today, telling him he’d be a perfect candidate to bring some music into the Blogosphere. Maybe I get him to play live at a Geek Dinner, blog confab or something. Just an idea.
A few phone calls later, he was on the case.
Rock on.
February 24, 2006
everybody wants love
Rick Segal’s new V.C. idea, as told by Shel:
He’s a believer in micro financing and has become convinced that small investments spread over a large number of entrepreneurs with the right talent could be very lucrative for the right investors.
gender politics
A wee spat between Gia and Anina seems to have broken out. I know and like them both, so I’m staying WELL out of it.
Still, it’s good to see gender politics entering the Blogosphere– it’s a remarkably asexual place, by and large. Maybe that needs to change.
kiwi something
Jack Yan is trying to launch a global fashion magazine brand not from Paris or New York, but from New Zealand.
That’s right; New Zealand. Hey, with the internet, anything’s possible.
stormhoek cartoon
Looks like Stormhoek’s marketing is starting to work. Heh.
[Note to self: Is Guy Kawasaki a wine drinker? Is he planning on throwing any Web 2.0 parties?]
The one thing I’m REALLY glad that me and the Stormhoek folk did is, when we started the first European wine promo back in the summer, we made it available to ALL bloggers, regardless of “influence” and/or traffic.
It made it a lot more interesting and fun than the usual “Let’s give out some freebies to some A-Listers and start some buzz” routine.
Meanwhile, the Stormhoek 100 geek dinners thing is up to 39 parties. We want to get the number up to 100. If you have a interesting “Web 2.0″ event coming up, large or small, Stormheok would perhaps like to sponsor it. Thanks.
malcolm gladwell has a blog
“Tipping Point” and “Blink Author, Malcolm Gladwell has started a blog. Thanks to Steve Rubel for the pointer.
biz school questions
[PS: Yes, the new M-Tablet PC drawings were all drawn in the last 24 hours.]
A business studies student just sent me the following questions, for his class. Anybody else want to have a shot at answering?
Below are some questions I had. Please consider them guidelines only. Feel free to add anything that you think might help.
Questions:
1) How would you describe your profession/work? What do you do (for money)?
2) What exactly is a
quality online content experiences are best!
Dennis Howlett does the great job of explaining just why traditional, paid media just-doesn’t-get-it:
red eye
[PS:] Yes, I’m enjoying my new Motion Computing Tablet P.C.
