InVinceCable, the apolitical campaign that is seeking to instigate conversations around the need for a qualified candidate to hold the position of Chancellor, now comprises 20-people (including myself) from across the industry. By the end of the month there will almost certainly be 50-people working on the campaign.
“I’ve had the pleasure in the last two weeks of working with a dozen of the finest Brits in PR, branding, digital / Web, public affairs and news distribution. We’ve joined up to work voluntarily on an apolitical campaign in the run up to the UK general election (invincecable.org.uk if you’re interested).”
“I’m telling you this because, having blogged about the convergence of marketing disciplines over the years (as distinct from “integrated”), this campaign of ours has revealed just how far the best practitioners’ expertise is now “converged”.
“Sure, there’s still the need to pause to explain the occasional aspect or define a particular piece of jargon or inevitable acronym, but generally the group just understands what we’re trying to achieve and how we can all work together to make it happen.
“There is no bewilderment, misconception or diffidence.
“And this is despite the fact that we haven’t actually all met each other. That doesn’t stop us. We’re Skype’ing, IM’ing, emailing, wiki’ing, posterous’ing, tweeting, and quickly assembling the resources, ideas and timetable for a cracking campaign. And all in the open. And all whilst earning a living. Awesome.”
The weather at home in Northumberland hasn’t had much to recommend it during the last two months. I’ve spent more time in London than at home – more by force of nature than design. It has been a lousy winter altogether.
But driving over Alnwick moor tonight to catch the train south to London this is the view that greeted me of the Cheviots. There’s still snow on the hills, but maybe, just maybe, Spring is around the corner.
Technical data: Canon EOS 450D; Exposure: 0.005 sec (1/200); Aperture: f/9.0; and Focal Length: 18 mm.
Richmond Park, the Natural History Museum and its bedfellow the Science Museum, and the Columbia Road Flower Market are all among my family’s favourite places in London where a trip out needn’t cost a fortune.
We added another to the list this weekend: The Monument to the Great Fire of London in the City at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street. The haul up the 311 steps makes for hard work but the panoramic views of landmarks such as the BT Tower, the Gherkin, the London Eye and Tower Bridge are breathtaking.
Only the views from the top of the dome at the nearby St Paul’s Cathedral come close but that’ll cost you an admission fee of £12.50 for adults and £4.50 for children – compared to £3 and £1 respectively to climb the Monument.
The simple Doric column is topped by a flaming urn of copper symbolising the Great Fire. It is 202 ft high which by design is exactly the distance from the base of the Monument to where Great Fire of London started on Pudding Lane in 1666.
The Monument has given its name to the nearby tube station (Central, Circle, District, Northern, Waterloo and City and Docklands Light Railway) and was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke and built in 1671. It reopened almost 12 months ago after a £4.5 million refurbishment.
TED Prize Winner Jamie Oliver gave the pitch of his life at TED on Wednesday evening when he addressed the conference in Palm Springs, California about obesity, the biggest killer in the Western world and the need to teach children about food.
Its an incredibly passionate and moving presentation.
The book is an antidote to our safety-obsessed bubble-wrapped society and encourages parents to educate their children to take responsibility and appreciate risk by making and doing dangerous things.
Flying a home made kite, building a fire, melting glass, creating an explosion and nailing and whittling wood are all projects contained in the book.
Fifty Dangerous Things written by the gang that runs Tinkering School in Montara, California. I first came across its founder Gever Tully at TED.
Have a great weekend. I’m off to help my kids cook their dinner on a fire.
This is my daughter’s Year 5 design and technology project. Its a wooden bob-a-long children’s toy fashioned in the image of the Twitter Fail Whale. It made the briefest of appearances on the Makezine blog after we submitted a snap to the MAKE Magazine pool on Flickr.
It’s called the Grumpy Environmentalist because we started out two-years ago with the best intentions but are constantly tested by the need to balance historic restoration with eco-measures.
The latest article reports on wooden shutters and cling film as alternatives to double glazing, compromises we’re making over insulation and the restoration of an old cast iron kitchen range.
I am fascinated by the messages on old postcards. The limited space means that they are often no more than single sentences written in clipped English.
This one was sent sometime after 1912 judging by the George V half-penny stamp.
The message asks its recipient to meet the sender off a train.
“Just a line to let you know I shall come on Friday. I shall reach Meldon with afternoon train and expect you will be able to come to the station.”
It’s succinct and to the point. It’s also social. A postcard can be passed around and shared. Now we’d use email, Facebook, SMS or Twitter of course, but the message would be equally brief.
Almost a hundred years on the content of our messages hasn’t changed, only the way we send and share them.
The application which has been available since September 2009 scans all the photos on your PC and asks for the name of each of the different people it finds. It then filters and tags each photo where it finds that person. Where it’s unsure it asks for confirmation.
Tweens in this instance has nothing to do with Twitter and everything to do with children who are “in between” 8 and 14 years old. Adolescence seemingly starts earlier with every generation.
I thoroughly recommend Talking to Tweenies by Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer if you’re interested how tweens cope with the modern world. It’s a frequently consulted text in the Waddington household.
10. Lifestreaming is bollocks Few people are interesting enough to make lifestreaming interesting but lifestreams do provide a good anthropological or historical record
8. Social web analytics key to proving value of PR Web analytics provides the PR industry with the tools to prove that a given input led to an output connect with the language and metrics of the marketing department
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