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December 19, 2012

Gape Into The Void Podcast, Episode 8 With Tim Ferriss

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[The print I drew for Tim etc.]

[Direct Link to the MP3]

 [Link to Gape Into The Void on iTu­nes] 

[Show notes:]

We had the chance to catch up with the ama­zing Tim Ferriss.  Tim is a fas­ci­na­ting, ins­pi­ring guy, and old friend of gaping­void, and our inter­view with him is full of great quo­tes and memo­ra­ble Ferriss-isms…

Here are links to some of the things touched on in the show… Enjoy!

TimFerriss.com

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June 23, 2008

hugh & the rabbi, episode 6

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John­nie Moore, Mark Earls, Rabbi Pinny and myself all met the other week and tal­ked for 70 minu­tes. It was fun. It was ram­bling. It was all good. Hope you have a lis­ten etc.

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May 12, 2008

hugh & the rabbi, episode 4

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Rabbi Pinny, John­nie, Euan Sem­ple and myself recor­ded a new pod­cast a cou­ple of weeks ago. John­nie wrote the show notes and ori­gi­nally pos­ted them over on his blog. It was a lot of fun.
Down­load the Pod­cast
Pod­cast RSS feed for Hugh and the Rabbi pod­casts

SHOW NOTES:

0.00 Intros, Hugh for­gets who “the Scot­tish guy is” and isn’t sure what Euan does but sett­les for rock star.
1.00 Hugh sets up the idea of love, reca­lling a talk about this by Euan at Reboot.
1.45 Euan talks about the L word, and people’s reac­tions to it. It’s about people’s basic desire to con­nect to each other, caring about things, get­ting pas­sio­nate about things. So much of the busi­ness world sani­ti­ses pas­sion out of things.
3.15 Pinny won­ders about how com­pa­nies show love. Refe­ren­ces Love­marks. In rela­tionships, if you don’t go to the nth degree, everything else doesn’t count. Talks about how mis­ta­kes by Face­book and Apple get poun­ced on by the blo­gosphere.
4.40 Love­marks pro­ves a red rag to Johnnie’s bull. Love means dif­fe­rent things to dif­fe­rent peo­ple. John­nie wary of the fana­ti­cal idea of love, the pur­suit of per­fec­tion. It’s more about being human, falli­ble.
5.50 Euan chi­mes in against fixa­tion on the roman­tic idea of love. Ins­tead favours “the pas­sion that grows out of day-to-day stuff”.
6.45 Hugh asks Euan about his World Ser­vice expe­rience at the BBC.
7.30 Euan: Roughly 47 dif­fe­rent lan­guage ser­vi­ces in the same buil­ding. Lots of cha­rac­ters, dif­fe­rent cul­tu­res. “If you were clim­bing lad­ders, they were all against dif­fe­rent walls.” — so less ego and tri­ba­lism than in the rest of the BBC. You had to get on quickly with peo­ple, the abi­lity to engage and con­nect, and move ideas round the buil­ding was a for­ma­tive expe­rience.
9.00 Pro­duct of World Ser­vice is ideas but also the kind of inti­macy you can create on radio.
9.50 Hugh talks about the pur­pose idea — what are we here for, why are we doing this. Trying to get a sense of pur­pose going.
10.30 Euan: pur­pose is good, so is obli­que­ness. Says what he likes about pod­casts is that they are not like broad­casts. Mean­de­ring semi-conversations that get under skin in a dif­fe­rent way than stuff pro­jec­ted at you in broad­casts. Con­ven­tio­nal radio out­put sounds inc­rea­singly patro­ni­sing.
12.20 Euan on how he pays each month to sup­port Leo Laporte’s pod­casts, more than half he pays in the BBC licence fee. “That’s me doing that to an indi­vi­dual because I really don’t want him to stop pod­cas­ting.” Peo­ple will pay for stuff that’s pas­sio­nate and acces­si­ble.
13.00 Hugh con­trasts Euan’s story with a UK show, News­night Review and its affi­lia­tion with the Not­ting Hill cul­tu­ral elite. New media is a threat, not so much to cash as to old media pri­vi­lege.
14.30 Euan recalls David Wein­ber­ger saying con­ver­sa­tions can only take place bet­ween equals.
15.00 Hugh on fan­boys.
15.20 Hugh asks Pinny a ques­tion “as the only guy here with a real job”: does this pod­cast affect your busi­ness.
16.10 Pinny: it’s not affec­ting the busi­ness… what it affec­ted is how peo­ple view him. Dis­cus­ses impact on his emplo­yees with Hugh.
18.45 Hugh on pod­casts as dis­rup­tors. Euan says dis­rup­tion is a word with all sorts of bag­gage but we get invol­ved in this stuff because it makes a dif­fe­rence. How can gover­nance cope with these chan­ges? It’s going to change power dyna­mics and who is suc­cess­ful and why.
21.10 Pinny returns to the theme of love, ins­pi­red by his nephew’s wed­ding where a Rabbi tal­ked about what hap­pens when you aren’t in love with love, but with the other. Com­pa­nies need to own up to mis­ta­kes.
23.00 Hugh: gosh, act like a human being, not a robot. John­nie: inti­macy an impor­tant word in Euan’s story. There’s something about “ordi­nary small­ness”, the abi­lity to have a real con­ver­sa­tion; how mee­tings that strive to be effec­tive often fail. The need to feel each other as human beings.
24.30 Hugh on how small town, West Texas expe­rience has affec­ted him. How it’s safe to have a guy wal­king round with a ten inch knife, because ever­yone knows who he is and what the knife is for. Euan remi­nis­ces about Glas­gow and Pinny, Israel.
27.20 Euan: the dan­ger of homo­ge­ni­sa­tion of suc­cess. Quote Doc Searls about things being valua­ble without being impor­tant.
28.00 John­nie on spen­ding Sun­day mor­ning with the papers and someone else, where you don’t talk but there’s a fee­ling of com­pa­nionship. You can’t put that on a spreadsheet.
29.15 John­nie on a twitter-related expe­rience of fin­ding work in a very acci­den­tal way. If fell out of a con­ver­sa­tion where he wasn’t trying to make something hap­pen.
30.30 Pinny: the unplan­ned as the eureka moments of our lives. Get­ting beyond ego.
32.10 Pinny on the online course Oprah is doing with Eckhart Tolle. This is why the web was crea­ted: to spread good­will.
33.00 Hugh: a lot of peo­ple are trying to use the web to do busi­ness the way it’s usually been done, which mis­ses the point.
34.00 Euan won­ders about how these chan­ges con­nect to our spi­ri­tua­lity. Hugh recalls a Catho­lic priest who influen­ced him. God as a metaphor rather than a bear­ded sky fairy.
35.40 Pinny the web is teaching reli­gion to say it’s about human beings, not about God. It’s teaching com­pa­nies it’s about what the cus­to­mer wants to pull, not what the com­pany wants to push. Strip away the disease of entit­le­ment and learn humi­lity. Con­nects to the rise of Barack Obama.
37.20 John­nie on the dif­fe­rence bet­ween Clin­ton and Obama. Clinton’s posi­tio­ning as the lea­der, Obama’s empha­sis on us.
38.20 Euan: autho­rity used to mean autho­rity as con­fe­rred; now it means having a com­pe­lling argu­ment or idea.
39.00 John­nie on autho­rity as being the authors of our own expe­rience. You don’t take autho­rity from the BBC any more, you par­ti­ci­pate.
40.00 Hugh wraps by asking what advice we’d give cor­po­rate man in light of all this. Euan: be brave. Pinny: don’t be stu­pid (“Be brave but have a day job”) Empty your mid once a day for oppor­tu­nity to hap­pen. Hugh: be com­pas­sio­nate to those above you. John­nie: you already know what to do.
44.35 Ends

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March 15, 2008

hugh & the rabbi, episode 3

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[LISTEN TO PODCAST HERE.]
John­nie, Mark and Rabbi Pinny all gathe­red for our semi-regular pod­cast. It was so far my favo­rite show, by a long shot. I think we’re slowly get­ting the hang of it. Rock on.
The Show Notes:
The con­ver­sa­tion begins with a docu­ment from 2002 that Mark e-mailed us all, entit­led “Beyond Sel­fish­ness”. So why did he send it to us?
1.10 Mark: I was recom­men­ded this docu­ment a few years ago by a client, and I found it really expres­sed pas­sio­na­tely the ideas I was star­ting to have, about where we were going wrong with Capi­ta­lism.
1.45 Mark: The docu­ment con­tra­dic­ted cer­tain very com­mon ideas in busi­ness– “The Heroic Mana­ger”, or “Sha­rehol­ders are the only peo­ple who mat­ter in a busi­ness” etc.
2.18 Pinny: The docu­ment reflects something much lar­ger going on in our times: The ever-growing need and demand for peo­ple, espe­cially lea­ders, to be more “trans­pa­rent” and “acces­si­ble”.
3.15 Hugh asks the ques­tion: Do y’all see this hap­pe­ning all over in real life, or is this something most of us are just paying lip ser­vice to?
3.40 Pinny: It’s something that really star­ted with the inter­net com­pa­nies, but sprea­ding out­wards. Men­tions Mark Zuc­ker­berg: Some­body worth $15billion yet still shows up for work wea­ring no socks.” The big com­pa­nies will still stay the same, but the change will come from the newer, youn­ger com­pa­nies.
4.30 Hugh talks about a con­ver­sa­tion he had with a few peo­ple inside Mic­ro­soft– how there’s a gene­ra­tion gap gro­wing within the com­pany, bet­ween the Old Guard, and the new gene­ra­tion of Mic­ro­sof­ties, who see their com­pany in much more open, orga­nic terms.
5.45 John­nie talks about how all these “Web 2.0” tools [that simply were not avai­la­ble 10 years ago] allow peo­ple to con­duct busi­ness on a far more orga­nic, natu­ral and HUMAN man­ner, in a nim­ble and agile way that big com­pa­nies simply will not be able to com­pete with. “The Revo­lu­tion will not be tele­vi­sed, because it’s already hap­pe­ning around us.”
8.00 Pinny: The inter­net allows human beings to “Tap into the Infi­nite”.
9.15 Hugh: I’ll always go back to Euan Semple’s com­ment: “What makes the inter­net inte­res­ting is Love.”
9.30 Mark: The inter­net is about peo­ple, not tech­no­logy, not machi­nes. Howe­ver the “machine” is the abi­ding metaphor for busi­ness and govern­ment.
11.00 Hugh asks Pinny: Being a guy who has a large busi­ness, how do you balance the need to “Grasp The Infi­nite” with the more pro­saic rea­li­ties of run­ning a busi­ness– mee­ting pay­roll, paying sup­pliers etc etc.
11.30 Pinny: The way to make the balance to unders­tand what the “Pur­pose” of the busi­ness is, and then make sure the wheels under­neath are run­ning.
12.30 Pinny tells a great story about “The Fif­teen Hats”, when he, his brother and two others first star­ted the com­pany. They lite­rally put ele­ven hats on the table, each one labe­lled with one of the ele­ven exe­cu­tive job tit­les, and then they sha­red the hats out amongst them­sel­ves. Now Pinny’s com­pany has 100 emplo­yees, ergo “100 Hats”. In 8 years, their com­pany has never had one per­son quit. Which for an inter­net com­pany, is a “pretty big deal”.
13.50 Mark: Every man­ger would LOVE to have their emplo­yees loving their work, love coming into work, but simply won’t have this by trea­ting peo­ple like “num­bers” or a “piece of resource”.
14.20 John­nie: How we’re sadd­led with this idea of “Homo Eco­no­mi­cus”. If we’re not going to buy into the “Ratio­nal Man” model, then we have to get used to tal­king about con­cepts like “Love” and “The Infi­nite”.
15.45 Pinny: I believe the com­pa­nies that “get this mes­sage across” are going to be the ones that will suc­ceed.
16.25 Hugh asks John­nie: So when we’re tal­king about things like “Love” and what­not, how do you edu­cate your big cor­po­rate clients with all this stuff?
17.00 John­nie: I remain opti­mis­tic. Most peo­ple who work at a com­pany know the com­pany works not because of their rigid models, but people’s willing ness to work around those models. Most peo­ple are “just one inter­ven­tion away” from a more human rela­tionship with the com­pany.
18.30 Hugh talks about The Blue Mons­ter, and how it came about. “I didn’t invent something for them to believe, a-la mis­sion sta­te­ment, I just arti­cu­la­ted a belief that was already there.”
20.45 Mark talks about wor­king with a client of his, a large TV com­pany. How he got them to arti­cu­late a sha­red sense of pur­pose, rather than a “mis­sion sta­te­ment”.
22.00 Hugh: If you look at all the great brands that have emer­ged in the last 2 deca­des [Nike, Starbuck’s etc], one thing they have in com­mon: They’re all GREAT at “arti­cu­la­ting belief”.
22.30 Mark: A lot of the current mar­ke­ting sch­tick is about impo­sing something that isn’t there. Which what makes so much of it false, sha­llow and objec­tio­na­ble in the real world. Maybe the job of mar­ke­ters in the future will be to “arti­cu­late what’s already there”.
23.00 Hugh talks about wor­king on the McDonald’s adver­ti­sing account in 1997. “Stay Hungry”. Conc­lu­sion: The stuff that makes com­pa­nies inte­res­ting is the same stuff that makes the Bible, the Torah and the Iliad inte­res­ting.
27.00 Pinny: When a com­pany grows, the thing they must remem­ber is the beliefs they had that got them there in the first place. Not always an easy thing to do.
28.00 Mark talks about the disas­ter of Qua­ker Oats buying the Snap­ple brand. The got into serious trou­ble because “They didn’t know how to handle a com­pany built on belief”.
31.00 Mark: The mar­ke­ting myth of “Best Prac­ti­ces”.
31.45 Pinny tells a great story about one of his favo­rite mar­ke­ting cam­paigns. Adver­ti­sing for Zap­pos Shoes, inside the plas­tic buc­kets they use in Ame­ri­can air­port secu­rity, of all pla­ces.
33.00 Hugh talks about being a Jeff Buc­kley fan­boy re. Play­ful­ness and vir­tuo­sity– a power­ful combo– in mar­ke­ting, as much as in music etc.
35.30 Hugh talks about “Inno­cent Drinks”, a brand that comes up pretty much in 90% of all Bri­tish bran­ding con­ver­sa­tions. “Minor Inter­ven­tions of Hap­pi­ness”.
36.50 Pinny talks about “The A-Ha! Moment” in all very suc­cess­ful [and very unsuc­cess­ful] mar­ke­ting cam­paigns.
37.15 John­nie: “The Tyranny of Big Ideas”. Tal­king about Improv Thea­tre: “When you try to take too much con­trol, you take away the huma­nity from the pro­cess.”
38.50 Pinny: “There are no Big Ideas. There are only Little Ideas.”
40.43 [FINIS]
[LISTEN TO PODCAST HERE.]

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February 17, 2008

hugh & the rabbi, episode 2

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[Lis­ten to the pod­cast here.]

Rabbi Pinny Gni­wisch of Ice.com, Mar­ke­ting con­tra­rians John­nie Moore and Mark Earls, plus myself gathe­red together over Skype for our second “Hugh & The Rabbi” pod­cast. We star­ted tal­king about “Influen­cers”, in the mar­ke­ting sense of the word. We ended on something far more inte­res­ting. A good time was had by all.

The Minu­tes:
00.32. Today’s show is about “Influence”. How clients ima­gine that there are these sec­ret “Levers” out there, and all a client has to do is sign a check to make the mar­ke­ter magi­cally pull it.
01.30 Mark: Tal­king about how things go from being mino­rity popu­la­rity, to majo­rity popu­lar. One school of thought pla­ces high degrees of empha­sis on reaching “Influen­cers”. Another school of thought pla­ces grea­ter empha­sis on a high degree of “Ran­dom Acts of Trac­tion”.
3.25 Hugh: All a mar­ke­ter can do is create lots of oppor­tu­ni­ties where “Ran­dom Acts of Trac­tion” can hap­pen.
03.35 Pinny: How can you tell me that you’re going to create an uber-widget for me, when you’ve already admit­ted that your one big suc­cess story came down to luck?
04.10 Mark: Who wants to go into a mee­ting with a big client and say, “Most of this, by the way, is just chance”…? Most of us want to say, “I’ve got the sec­ret sauce that’ll give you the edge…”
04.40 John­nie: Para­dox: Being pri­ma­tes, we’re all hard­wi­red for fair play. Yet we all want to be the one with the unfair advan­tage.
05.35 Hugh: “All is vanity.”
05.40 Pinny: Suc­cess is 5% wis­dom, and 95% luck. If it were the other way around, we’d all be a lot hap­pier.
07.00 Mark: On crea­ting one’s own luck: The one thing the great minds of the Twen­tieth Cen­tury all seem to have in com­mon was: a very petit-bourgeoise work ethic. “You have to be there, wor­king at your desk, when a ran­dom act of Luck comes your way”.
08.20 Pinny: The ones that influence the world are the ones who show up; the ones who are there. Anyone can create a “Ves­sel for Bles­sing”, but you have to “be there” in order to do it.
09.00 The “Influen­tial” model is most often tou­ted by peo­ple who would like to be seen as “Influen­tials”, or at least, “Friends of Influen­tials”.
09.30 Mark rants about “Cool Hun­ters”.
10.00 John­nie: Group beha­vior in asses­sing music varies WILDLY, depen­ding on whether peo­ple in the group are being obser­ved by other peo­ple in the group.
11.00 John­nie: In mar­ke­ting, the order of events we post-rationalize is much, much more ran­dom than we rea­lize, let alone admit.
11.30 Mark rants on about the record busi­ness.
13.15 John­nie: The futi­lity of trying to out-think the mar­ket.
14.00 John­nie: One has to be “in the moment” [to use the Buddhist phrase] in order to truly unders­tand the mar­ket.
14.25 Pinny: Being “pre­sent” is what truly crea­tes sus­tai­na­bi­lity. That, and sta­ying “hum­ble”.
15.05 Just because Mal­colm Glad­well is wrong, doesn’t mean Mass Mar­ke­ting is right.
15.40 Hugh talks about Rus­sell Davies: Suc­cess­ful brands don’t do “One Big Thing”, they do lots of little things.
17.00 Hugh talks about the “Bles­sing and the Curse” of when things go viral.
18.30 Mark: It’s far more sen­si­ble to try lots of dif­fe­rent LITTLE expe­ri­ments, than try to put all of one’s weight behind the ONE BIG IDEA.
20.05 Pinny: Com­pa­nies have to be not top-down, or bottom-up in order to be crea­tive– they must be “side­ways”.
21.10 John­nie: Com­pa­nies have to be Peer-to-Peer [i.e. “Side­ways”], not top-down or bottom-up. Peo­ple find it hard to work together without hie­rarchies.
22.00 Hugh talks about mee­ting Tim Bur­ton in 1989, and how he desc­ri­bed direc­ting movies.
24.00 Pinny: Com­pa­nies that allow Peer-to-Peer will flou­rish. The dia­log rab­bis have with their con­gre­gants is much dif­fe­rent than it was thou­sands of years ago. Far more peer-to-peer etc. “Over time, the big ans­wers never change, but the big ques­tions do.“
25.00 Pinny: Kids are much stron­ger “con­su­mers” than they were 100 years ago. Their ques­tions get big­ger.
26.12 Hugh: The rea­son Web 2.0 is so “char­ming” is that what dri­ves it at its core, is a lot of young peo­ple, “Just trying to build and share cool stuff with their friends.” Apps are built around pre-existing rela­tionships, not trying to create rela­tionships. For their own sake.
29.30 Hugh and Pinny talk about the dia­mond busi­ness. “It’s not the rock that’s inte­res­ting. It’s that Tom and Jill love each other and are get­ting married, that is inte­res­ting”. Get­ting the pro­duct to “Trans­cend its own uti­lity” is where the action is.
31.00 Mark talks about how Web 2.0 shows us so much about our real, “Social Ape” sel­ves, not our “Scien­ti­fic Mar­ke­ting” sel­ves.
32.50 Hugh talks about Euan Semple’s the­sis about “Love” being the main dri­ver of Web 2.0.
34.40 Pinny: The Five Levels of Mys­ti­cism. How as time goes on, we get dee­per into the soul. Society is get­ting dee­per in the spi­ri­tual level.
36.40 Mark talks about get­ting away from busi­ness being seen as a mecha­ni­cal thing, towards something more based on “Belief”. The com­pa­nies that excite us the most are not “just about the metrics”. Peo­ple need “Belief”, both as indi­vi­duals and as mem­bers of groups.
39.30 Hugh: “Sing like you mean the words.”
39.45 John­nie tells a great story about the actor, Char­les Law­ton. “I know the psalm, but she knows the Shepherd.”

41.15 Mark tells a great story about a thea­ter group. “Even when nobody is watching…”
44.15 Mark talks about the great 1973 Bar­ba­rians vs All Blacks rugby game, as a metaphor for achie­ving great­ness.
46.50 Pinny tells a story about grab­bing a drop­ped scroll while cros­sing the street in heavy traf­fic. A metaphor for “Always being on”. Being trans­pa­rent means “Always being on”. Hugh: “When you’re in that state, you are in a State of Bliss, a State of Grace.”
49.43 Finis.

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January 11, 2008

podcast update

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Just in case you mis­sed it, here it is one more time:
John­nie Moore and Mark Earls, my two favo­rite Bri­tish mar­ke­ting blog­gers, joi­ned me last wee­kend on a pod­cast, where we riff about the “Death of Adver­ti­sing” and, more impor­tantly, what comes after it.
The pod­cast is here on Johnnie’s blog. We had a most enjo­ya­ble 45 minu­tes or so. Hope­fully you’ll con­cur.
P.S. In case you don’t have 45 minu­tes to spend lis­te­ning to a pod­cast, John­nie also kept pretty com­prehen­sive notes on the minutes:

40.35 Mark’s loo­king at how beha­viours cas­cade through popu­la­tions and we do we work with them or sub­vert them. Hugh: com­pa­nies don’t like to work with ran­dom.
41.35 Hugh: what’s wor­ked for me is to get away from the idea of mes­sage and think ins­tead of social ges­ture. How this works for Stormhoek.
43.05 John­nie: Social objects are inci­den­tal to the fun­da­men­tal pro­cess of rela­ting. The brand is secon­dary to the pro­cess and bran­ding goes wrong when it tries to make the pro­duct the star. Hugh: paying more atten­tion to the con­ver­sa­tions that are hap­pe­ning rather than crea­ting a message.

Rock on, Johnnie.

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April 25, 2007

san francisco and seattle

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I’m flying out to San Fran­cisco next week on Tues­day, the 1st of May. Sta­ying there one night, then I’m off to Seattle to hang with the groovy cats at Mic­ro­soft for the remain­der of the week. Flying back home to Lon­don on the 6th.
I’ve never been to San Fran­cisco before, believe it or not. Or Seattle.
When I’m there I’m hoping to spend some time with Robert Sco­ble and some folk at Pod­tech, his emplo­yer. If Robert can help me get it orga­ni­zed I’d love to do a geek din­ner that night, though I don’t know how fea­si­ble that is. What sayest Mar­yam?
[UPDATE:] If you plan on coming, add your name to the wiki here.

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January 20, 2007

it’s the calacanis fanboy hour!

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My friend Jason Cala­ca­nis is well known for both entre­pre­neurship and blog­ging.
And it turns out he’s a very talen­ted pod­cas­ter as well. His new pod­cast is now being hosted/run by Pod­Tech, the same folk that employ Robert Sco­ble.
Cala­ca­nis­Cast 9 is just up. I appea­red on it, as well as a bunch of for­mer Gill­mor Gang mem­bers– Doc Searls, Dan Far­ber, Michael Arring­ton etc– but no Steve Gill­mor, sadly. We talk about the new Apple iPhone.
A good time was had by all. I hope you’ll have a lis­ten.
Doc Searls comments:

As I said on the Cal­ca­nis­Cast the other day, it’s not smart to bet against Steve Jobs. (I’m tal­king about bet­ting here, not what we like or dis­like.) Apple, like Pixar (Steve’s other com­pany, now part of Dis­ney), has rela­ti­vely few SKUs (new pro­ducts).
They’re not a Pana­so­nic or a Sony that can throw thou­sands of SKUs against the wall like spaghetti and see what sticks. They try to make a very few, very appea­ling, pro­ducts. If you’d asked the pun­dits, inc­lu­ding the many of us here in the ‘sphere, what the chan­ces were of Apple sto­res being a suc­cess were back when they star­ted, what would we say? Those sto­res were radi­cally new and dif­fe­rent and well-thought-out and — it tur­ned out — very suc­cess­ful.
In spite of the expec­ta­tions of many, espe­cially in the retai­ling busi­ness. But… they wor­ked out. Per­so­nally, I think the iPhone is up against huge com­pe­ti­tion and is not likely to be a slam-dunk. But I wouldn’t put money on that.

D’accord. Two thoughts:
1. This is busi­ness. Capi­ta­lism. Not some con­test to see who gets to date the Prom Queen. Doc unders­tands this. Based on some of the con­ver­sa­tions I’ve spot­ted hap­pe­ning in com­ment sec­tions everywhere, I’m not con­vin­ced every­body does.
2. Wha­te­ver Apple does with their phone, by rai­sing the bar in cer­tain areas [e.g. design], and fai­ling to raise the bar in other areas [e.g. ope­ness], they are crea­ting a ton of oppor­tu­ni­ties for their com­pe­ti­tion e.g. Nokia, Sony, Moto­rola etc. The lat­ter, ins­tead of being worried, should be well plea­sed.
[Disc­lo­sure: I’m a very happy and satis­fied Nokia N73 user.]

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November 20, 2006

it’s official.…

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Cala­ca­nis’ pod­cast rocks.

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October 26, 2006

i.t. cork podcast

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From Tom Raftery:

Wel­come to the IT@Cork pre-conference PR pod­casts. In this pod­cast series, kindly spon­so­red by Black­night Solu­tions, we are tal­king to some of the spea­kers in the upco­ming 2006 IT@Cork Busi­ness and Tech­no­logy con­fe­rence.
In this pod­cast, second in the series we are tal­king to Hugh Mac­Leod. Hugh is a blog­ger, car­too­nist and rogue mar­ke­ter. Hugh coi­ned the phrase Glo­bal Mic­ro­brand refe­rring to the extre­mely low-cost, hyper effi­cient brand stra­te­gies he used to gain two small com­pa­nies glo­bal recog­ni­tion.
Here are the ques­tions I asked Hugh and the time in the inter­view I asked them:
How did a car­too­nist get into marketing? — 0:22
For anyone who is una­ware, can you tell us about the Clue­train Mani­festo and then segue from that into the term you have coi­ned, the Glo­bal Microbrand? — 07:43
But you have used blogs as a cheap way to get brands out there… — 14:17
And you have done the same for a small South Afri­can vine­yard, Stormhoek… — 20:24
Can you speak to sales inc­rea­ses for Stormhoek over the last 12 months? — 25:51

It was one of my bet­ter pod­casts, I thought. You decide.
[I’m spea­king at the IT@Cork con­fe­rence in Ire­land on Novem­ber 29th.]

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September 3, 2006

mr. podcast

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[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licen­sing terms here etc.]

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