June 15, 2006
why women leave new york
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[Dedicated to Laren, of course.]
Hugh MacLeod
Hi, I'm Hugh.
My life is committed to drawing little illustrations that spread messages, inspire people, help businesses kick butt & support causes.
Gapingvoid is based upon the science of how these cartoons work.
If we can help you or your business, please email us here.
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Archive for June, 2006
death by pussy
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good snowballs:
JP Rangaswami hits the bull’s eye:
Copernicus and Galileo and Newton and even Einstein would have had a far easier time if they were able to blog. Because good snowballs can’t be suppressed.
the corporate wine blogging manifesto
I’ve been asked to write this piece of marketing collateral for Stormhoek, explaining the Stormhoek story : The bloggers’ wine freebie, The 100 Geek Dinners etc etc.
Part of the remit is that the document is aimed at people in the wine trade who are not only NOT web savvy, but downright hostile to all thing internet in general. These people have never heard of blogs or The Cluetrain, let alone Clay Shirky. Even AOL is a bit too “out there” for some of them.
It’s easy selling the idea of social media to people who like the internet in the first place. But to people who don’t?
Anyway, I had a bash at writing Page One:
The Stormhoek Story: A incredible global conversation is taking place that will decided the future success or failure of all products, not just in the wine trade, but in all industries.
So you’re in the wine business. You’re probably wondering what the future of the wine business is (at least if you’re smart, you are).
Guess what? The future not about the usual bumph: terroir, vintage, cork vs screwcap, Sauvingnon vs Pinotage, Australian vs Argentine, hipster labels vs old-fashioned labels etc. Nobody cares.
The future of the wine business is– actually– the same as the future of all business.
The future is, of course, the internet.
But when we say ‘internet’, we’re not talking about the usual suspects: Internet retail. Vinyard websites. All the stuff we’ve seen before. Those are just virtual storefronts. Little more than electronic brochures. Those are irrelevant.
The web is not about techonolgy. The web is not about a new media to market one’s wares in. And the web is certainly not about you.
Remember the following line, first coined by Jeff Jarvis; you will need to rely on it for the rest of your life:The web is about people.
in more layman’s terms, consider the words of Clay Shirky:
The cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.
[www.shirky.com]The end result of this is, wiith the advent of the internet and various forms of social software, suddenly highly savvy networks of people are springing up in their millions. They’re talking to each other. With or without your permission.
It used to be, you could buy a piece of media, hire some advertising professionals to polish the message till it was nice and shiny, and deliver it to as many people as you wanted, in whatever form you wanted.
But suddenly, you’re now irrelevant.
Now, people can simply ignore you. And they’ve gotten very good at ignoring you. Nobody cares about you or your wine. They’d rather talk to their friends and contacts about wine, they don’t need to hear it from you. They probably think what you have to say is just a lot of advertising-induced lies, anyway. They have better sources of information. And lots of them.
This is a pretty daunting enough prospect, if you’re a large player in the wine market, with millions of cases shipped annually, and a marketing budget the size of the GDP of Lithuania.
But what if you’re like us, Stormhoek, a small South African vineyard in the middle of nowhere, thousands of miles away from your mainly British and American customers, with no marketing budget to speak of, with scores upon scores of worthy competitors, all fighting like hungry rats for ever-decreasing share of the market?
What do you do?
This is just a very rough first draft. It needs to be shorter. But it’s not a bad start. More later…
June 14, 2006
a permanent state of stressed-out exhaustion
Started work at 9am yesterday. Quit work at 3am this morning. Getting all ready for Thomas’ trip to America [He leaves tomorrow].
I know the world I love, the world I want to belong to. Seems the price of membership is a permanent state of stressed-out exhaustion. Fair enough.
June 12, 2006
scatchmyback.com
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why does a dog
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Techcrunch is one year old today. Happy Birthday!
Steve Rubel gives a good run-down on Web 2.0’s greatest publishing phenom of the last year:
The path Michael Arrington followed can be replicated by anyone else and it proves that blogs can eat into the mainstream media ad dollars and eyeballs. All you need to do is: a) identify a high interest topic online that currently does not have a blog tracking it, b) write about it very actively and do it well and c) don’t be afraid to promote it. Today Michael is viewed as a critical newsmaker. He breaks big stories on his own right and with the help of PR people.
Congratulations, Michael!
gapingschwag
NB: If you see a gapingvoid cartoon that you like, and you fancy it as a piece of schwag, all you have to do is download the high-resolution image off this site, then upload it here onto Cafepress. Easy.
[Though I’d prefer it if you read my licensing terms first, of course.]
“companies are schwag”
[Speaking of schwag, I’ve made a commemorative “Scoble’s Leaving” ceramic tile drinks coaster over at Cafepress.]
Doc Searls on Robert Scoble’s recent departure from Microsoft:
One sad thing for Microsoft about losing Scoble was that they couldn’t pay him what he was worth to the company, which will remain incalculably large — even after he’s gone. In fact, there is no HR metric for figuring the worth of a worker like Scoble, whose value to Microsoft was due more to his work outside the company’s walls than inside them. Ironically, Robert Scoble may turn out to have been the most human resource Microsoft ever had.
Their loss, most definitely.
I like Microsoft. I’d go work for them, if they were ever short of a few disruptive bloggers, and the price was very, very right. I doubt they would hire me, though. My days of being governed by HR metrics are long gone.
just because the world is changing
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hello insane person
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June 11, 2006
gapingvoid coffee mug
Frank Gruber shows off his new gapingvoid coffee mug.
[Order the new design here.]
suddenly the boredom
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not here to make
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scoble’s leaving microsoft
[The rumors are true.] Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft.
I talked to Robert on the phone the other day. He told me about his leaving, moving over to Podtech.net instead etc. He asked me not to tell anyone, which I didn’t, until now.
Microsoft had a real asset with Robert. I supspect they didn’t appreciate him fully. For someone who made such a huge contribution to their company culture, I was shocked by how little they paid him.
Anyway, good luck, Maryam and Robert, in your new life in California. Rock on.
lets change the world
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art for the people
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June 10, 2006
my one ambition
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life sucks 378
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you’ve only been dead
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being an artist
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i have something to say
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a load of old wank
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geek dinners galore etc
The Stormhoek Geek Dinnery Goodness continues:
1. An mp4 video clip of everyone at the Miami geek dinner holding up their gapingvoid fine art prints.
2. Looks like the Cork geek dinner in Ireland was a huge success. Microsoft’s Rob Burke also blogged about it.
3. There was our largest-so-far geek dinner in Redwood City, organised by the very talented Kai Chang. 140 people turned up, including of Keith Ferrazzi of “Never Eat Alone” fame, and Charles Siegel of Charles Chocolates, a global microbrand if ever there was one.
4. Andy and his friends had the geek dinner in Tuscon, Arizona. They also put a lovely 20-second film short of the event up on YouTube. Very cool.
I have three thoughts on all this:
1. It’s turning out to be a lot more fun, interesting and successful than I predicted. This is a good thing.
2. I don’t really feel I have any new “Marketing 2.0″ theories to explain what’s going on. I just think it’s really cool to meet like-minded people, and open a dialogue of sorts with them. If they like the wine, great. If not, no big deal. At least we’re trying to have fun with it. I really don’t think it needs to be any more complicated than that.
3. I’m wondering if, how and when this thing is going to scale outside of the blogosphere, into the mainstream, where it needs to eventually end up. Or will it just get stuck in the “Echo Chamber Of Death”, like so many other blog-related enterprises?
What do you think?
June 8, 2006
threescore and ten
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we are stardust
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cigarettes
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I quit smoking for about the 50th time this morning. Let’s see if I can go more than 45 minutes this time round.
June 7, 2006
seth godin comments
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[Inspired by Seth Godin’s recent post.]
June 6, 2006
lilac network
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June 5, 2006
signing posters
Today I’m in London over at the Stormhoek office, signing 1000 posters [One Thousand. Ouch.] for the 100 Geek Dinners etc etc.
Of course, the more this enterprise gains traction, the more prints Poor Me has to sign. It’s already beginning to get out of hand. Luckily, I’m really getting into it. Rock on.
[NB: you can download a high-res version of the drawing here.]
a man’s heart.
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June 4, 2006
trying to figure out
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still in copenhagen
[Rick Segal & myself doing our schpiel at Reboot8.]
I’m writing this from the hotel lobby in Copenhagen. Got a couple of hours here till I grab a taxi to the airport, arriving in London tonight etc.
Thanks to Thomas and crew, as always, for putting on such a great show at Reboot8.
Brief observations:
1. Nobody was using the word “blog” much. Or “blogging”. The phrase “future of blogging” was conspicuously absent. It’s like we’re all too busy working on our own projects to worry about the “state of the blogosphere”; another phrase that was gratefully nowhere to be seen.
2. I spent the afternoon yesterday one-on-one hanging out with Doc Searls. We ended up eating Mongolian BBQ and talking about the meaning of life. We both seemed to have arrived at our calling rather late in life, which is great, of course, but also exhausting. A lot of the people we hung out with this weekend were 10 or more years younger than me, even more so with Doc. We seem to have lost a decade or so somewhere down the line.
3. Stowe Boyd is an interesting chap. They guy wants to change the world. Rock on.
4. Always good to run into Geoff Jones again.
5. I’m not sure if I get Doc Searls’ “Intention Economy” idea yet. But I also think “Marketing is Bullshit” is a lot closer to the truth than “Marketing is Dead”. When they talk about “marketing” in this context, of course, they mean “marketing department” marketing. Add-on marketing, as opposed to baked-in marketing. Exherent, not inherent etc. I have no problem with the idea that “Everything is marketing from now on”, even if it might make Tom Coates a bit squeamish. etc
6. This is my third visit to Scandenavia. I find the place utterly agreeable, although I’m not crazy about the food [The beer, of course, is a completely different matter altogether]. I would have no problem living here for a while if the right gig ever came up. I also feel the same way about Switzerland.
7. One thing I like about living in Europe is the ease of travel. You catch a plane, and an hour or two later, you’re somewhere interesting like Stockholm or Paris. When I lived in New York, an hour on the plane and you would end up somewhere like Boston or Cleveland. Not quite the same.
8. Would like to get more involved with Rick Segal’s company, MusicIP. We’re working on it, but it’s hard as both of us are so damn busy with other things.
9. Had a great time with Laurent, Nico and all the chaps from CoComment. Lovely people. Can’t wait to get back to Geneva again.
10. Nice to see more and more people sniffing around, asking about Sigurd and Thingamy. The interesting thing about Thingamy is that it scales. Theoretically you can run General Motors from your cellphone, if your thumbs could type fast enough.
11. Back in London tomorrow. Signing more Stormhoek prints. Then home on Wednesday. It’s been an intense month. Will be glad to be back in quiet mode again.
June 3, 2006
gapingvoid coffee mug
This cartoon is now a coffee mug design. Geoff Jones bought the first one.
PS. I’m selling it at cost, with no mark-up.
“stormhoek: it’s not just for geeks any more.”
[Groupies! Hurrah!]
The Stormhoek Geek dinner in Miami was an interesting one… mainly because the geek factor was actually rather low. The guy having the party was a finalist in the TV show “The Apprentice” with Donald Trump etc etc.
Vive la difference.
June 2, 2006
still at reboot
I’m still at Reboot.8
UPDATE: You can follow what people are saying about it over here at Technorati. Highlights for me were the talks given by JP Rangaswami and Doc Searls.
[UPDATE:] Euan’s speech was awesome. Rock on.
[Photographs here on Flickr.]
June 1, 2006
lost my phone
I’m in Copenhagen, having arrived safely at the Reboot venue.
I lost my phone last night. Aaaargh. If you need to reach me, just send an e-mail. I should be phone contactable again by Saturday afternoon, but I still feel majorly ticked off.
