Archive for the ‘irishblogs’ Category

Fluffy Links – Monday August 25th 2014

Monday, August 25th, 2014

This is exact;y why I do training and talks even if it’s the same talk nearly every time. You learn more by teaching it or prepping as if you’re going to teach it.

Traffic to Telegraph surges because of deeper thinking and integration with Facebook.

Risky podcasts. Well, podcasts on risk.

Would love to see this for Ireland. Searches from poor areas and wealthy areas.

Tom Doorley on Cork restaurants and the ones he likes.

Livermorium. If I were to have a heavy metal band, that’s the name. (It’s the heaviest metal in the world).

Fiat gets their Tumblr audience.

Citizen Journalism bolloxology. A smartphone doesn’t make you a reporter but here are some BBC tips on how to report better if you happen upon a newsworthy event.

Growth Hacking as a term has a higher bullshit ding than SEO but this post on getting 100s of thousands of email leads. It’s actually simple enough stuff with a little automation.

Rageviews

By @mikearauz “My Company Adopted a Holacracy. It Kind of Sucked”.

A bit dense but. Things I’ve learned from Andy Rachleff.

Just. Wow. Unicorns!

Critics say this is the best documentary film ever

Fluffy Links – Monday August 11th 2014

Monday, August 11th, 2014

Ireland’s first Mobile Journalism conference with a tonne of workshops. March 2015.

One day there’ll be millions of mini-satellites in space that you can rent and use like some kind of Amazon Web Service. SSaaS – Space Satellite as a Service or something like that. A Scottish company is already on their way to this, they’re called Clyde Space and one of their mini-sats called the Funcube can be connected to by schools.

For shame. Really, Irish number ones. So much novelty shite.

Remember Dollar Shave Club? They’re doing VERY well as it happens. Razors, by post. It works.

Digitising the life of Salman Rushdie.

Wikipedia apps for the developing world. Free access. Now if they had some peer to peer option to share the offline content with other phones, it would be really clever.

More ways to earn from your clients without being a pushy git.

Ice cream that changes colour when you lick it. Very Willy Wonka.

A bit dense but good. Business lessons from Andy Rachleff.

Not a fan of Andreessen of late but this podcast on bundling and unbundling can give you insight if you are in business or want to get into business.

Time chunks not time confetti. Managing your time. And another guide says kind of the same thing but also encourages you to log your time, almost like a food diary.

Sir Christopher Meyer on maintaining peace. “if you want your neighbour to be peaceful and friendly, don’t make him thin and angry, make him fat and prosperous

Ask two friends to reach recommend a book you should read. Find the connection between the two of them.

The future of PR – Robots

Wednesday, August 6th, 2014

Stay with me on this. See the recent BBC news piece about a Korean baseball team adding in robots to the crowd so it appears the team is followed more than they are? Sure, people have been buying followers for years in the virtual spaces but now it’s physical spaces.

And at the same time we have these scientific studies showing how humans will mimic the facial expressions of robots. Silly humans.

The spontaneous mimicry of others’ emotional facial expressions constitutes a rudimentary form of empathy and facilitates social understanding

This mimicry occurs even though these participants find the android unsettling and are fully aware that it lacks intentionality

Now the study does say when the android is videoed instead of being in person, less mimicry occurs. They can fix that I bet. See the issue here is we mistrust someone as we can read their face and even the best trained PR people do actually find it hard to physically hide their lies despite what comes out of their mouth. But with with robots you can perfectly program the facial expressions and we’ll smile back to the “genuine” smile. A physiological study shows that when people give their driverless cars names, they are more forgiving when the vehicle has an error.

So another oil spill and this time BP whips out the robo-spokesperson who like Johnny-Cab, tells you with a face full of contrition that they are sorry and it wasn’t their fault. Suckers.

And this from a few years ago when two bots argue with each other

Fluffy Links – Tuesday August 5th 2014

Tuesday, August 5th, 2014

Last chance to book a place at the Twitter workshop in Dublin tomorrow.

LukeW: Offline First is the new Mobile First.

Mentions of burgers, celtic tiger and beer on Yelp Dublin over the years. Kind of a useless tool really.

This almost reads like a whistle-blowing system for Central Bank Employees.

Working with your customers to co-design products/services.

A night in the museum, sleepovers for adults. Can we do this is the dead zoo?

This is a RIG. BBC video production rig. What comes after the very expensive steadicam.

This Gareth Pugh guy seems to be very much inspired by sci fi. Beautiful fashions.

I really like this. Just another great way that comic books are being so creative with how they communicate.

Where all those user interface symbols come from.

Genius. Order your food with a certain accent to get a discount. Or arrive as a super hero.

How to “paint” WiFi. Clever way to make invisible wifi appear to be visible.

No fuckhead you are NOT a storyteller:

You are not a storyteller – Stefan Sagmeister @ FITC from FITC on Vimeo.

Full double album

Don’t Wait – Ira Glass Quote

Tuesday, July 29th, 2014

Ira Glass, from a Lifehacker interview.

Don’t wait for permission to make something that’s interesting or amusing to you. Just do it now. Don’t wait. Find a story idea, start making it, give yourself a deadline, show it to people who’ll give you notes to make it better. Don’t wait till you’re older, or in some better job than you have now. Don’t wait for anything. Don’t wait till some magical story idea drops into your lap. That’s not where ideas come from. Go looking for an idea and it’ll show up. Begin now. Be a fucking soldier about it and be tough.

Fluffy Links – Monday July 28th 2014

Monday, July 28th, 2014

Sports doesn’t have to be on a field with mud or in a ring with blood. Sky Sports and others won’t cop this for years but those who get in early and build a viewing audience will get acquired by the old giants.

12 lessons from waking at 0430 each week day.

Books:
Women in Space. 23 stories of awesome astronauts and space industry people.

Books to read this Summer as suggested by Bill Gates.

Another growth hacking ebook but this looks good. Big name case studies.

YOU MAKE TIME. But where do you find the time to read books? I hear the same about doing SEO for websites, doing social media updates etc. etc.

Another reading list from Responsive.org

Now the robots are making us mimic them. Be scared.

Very good slidedeck from Kathryn Parkes at the recent Refresh event. All about storytelling and user interfaces.

Bacteria that feed off electrons. Bound to happen. Could they feed off us?

How to make cute chalkboard signs from cardboard.

You iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, just one big (or small) data logging device that can phone home. (PDF file)

LittleBits is such a cool site and concept. Receive a text message when someone rings your doorbell.

Fluffy Links – Tuesday July 22nd 2014

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2014

Bullshit is the glue of our society. George Carlin. Comedian yes, philosopher yes.

I had hoped to go to the Dots conference but I have work in Cork that day. Boo. Go to it.

Building a successful internal network. Lessons from Telefonica.

Design guidelines from your favourite sites and apps.

The National Library on Flickr Commons. Copyright free photos. Grand Parade Cork.

How Simplifying a 3-Step Form Generated a 30% Conversion Lift

Got interviewed for a student project recently about brands working in regulated markets and whether that hindered them. 2007 interview with Ev Williams from Twitter about how their character restrictions make people creative.

BBC The Men Who Made us Spend. It’s a bit over the top. MehmehBUTAPPLEmehmeh.

This is Eye witness news in a way, Gordon Brown talk to LSE not recorded it seems but tweets from people that were there can give you context.

Moneyball for publishing

Managing in the decade of information overload.

Fluffy Links – Monday 14th of July 2014

Monday, July 14th, 2014

Each and Other is risen from the ashes of IQ Content. Very exciting to see what happens next. Reads like they’re on a design thinking/Ideo path.

New fashion blog. Based in Ireland.

Festival of Curiosity, Dublin, July 24th to 27th.

BBC shows you how to track a company on Twitter for news. Timeline flow is a biggy, pattern recognition again.

Money Ball the sequel? Buy LOTS of players and see how they perform. So data and then performance. Sounds like a startup

“Most of us do not even know how to ask a question. Most of us do not see the root of the word “question” is “quest”.”

Brazil versus Germany. Without Brazil.

The News section is hilarious.

The two Google founders giving a joint and candid interview. A very rare thing.

How to get young people to vote

You always say exactly what you shouldn’t be saying

Thursday, July 10th, 2014

From One Hundred Years of Solitude. Chapter 14. Lovely book.

Meme felt the weight of his hand on her knee and she knew that they were both arriving at the other side of abandonment at that instant. “What shocks me about you” she said, smiling, “is that you always say exactly what you shouldn’t be saying”. She lost her mind over him. She could not sleep and she lost her appetite and sank so deeply into solitude that even her father became an annoyance.

Culture Shock Notes

Monday, July 7th, 2014

Culture shock notes

I bought Will McInnes’ Culture Shock book a good while back and finally had enough time off to read it. As I said to Will, I dog eared the shit out of it and these are the notes from those dog eared pages. Makes sense to me, maybe not to you. I think a lot has happened and sadly a lot HAS NOT happened since it came out so the book is worth a read for anyone in a company/organisation that wants to make changes. Like all books in a new area it had to mix the cheerleading and bringing you over the line part with the “and here’s how to do it part”. I do think even in 2014 that this still needs to happen but for not as many people so one wonders could there be a sister book for the “doing” part and maybe with more exercises. So Will, another book please!

A word of warning: The book however in size looks like it’s going to be nice and easy but the work involved is going to take a lot to do but this will help you plan it all out. This book is a “put downable book” because you are dog earing or taking notes. A very personal feeling is a different shape to the book might have helped with some of the exercises/flows so they’re all on one page or spread over two matching pages. Bigger in terms of being wider. Slimmer but wider.

There’s probably a niche for another book in this area too for people like me, “lone wolf” business people. So Will, a third book!

So, some of my notes, copy, paste and Google, I might be unlazy and add links to these later.
Pg 9 “In ultra competitive business landscape, our organisations need a higher purpose. a story of meaning”

Pg 24 CTI – Coaches Training Institute
“what’s your purpose?” – Richard Jacobs
Check four audiobook too

Pg 47 HCL Technologies.
“employees first, customers second” – Vincent Nagar
Namasté Solar

Pg 57 Worldblu. List of most democratic companies. The Worldblu Scorecard.

Pg 58 Ready. Fire. Aim.

Pg 81 Namasté Solar – F.O.H. Frank Open Honest comms.

Pg 87 Gore.
Associates not employees. Sponsor not manager.
Max 200 in a unit/plant
CEO Terri Kelly – MIT Talk
Nixon McInnes – Church of Fail

Pg 105,106 Conscious Leadership
1. Leading Yourself
2. Style
3. Trust and Ethics
4. Transparency
5. Rewards
6. Comms – Realtime
7. support

Pg 108 – Questions to ask yourself

Pg 118 “Every soldier is a sensor. Every citizen is a contributor. Every resident a reporter.” – Brian Humphrey

Pg 137 Euan Semple “Banning social sites at work is for wimps, real managers have conversations with their time wasters about wasting time”

Pg 142 Crowdsourcing site “Innocentive” – Yury Bodrov

Pg 147 Hackdays – Social Innovation Camps

Pg 162 Andy Grove – “high tech runs three times faster than normal businesses. government runs three times slower than normal businesses”

Pg 173 Ben Fletcher, Karen Pine – Do something different programme

Pg 177 Train company PR guy – “We have twenty seconds before the world knows more about the crisis than we do”

Pg 179 OODA
Observe – What’s going on here?
Orient – What’s my place? Where am I in relation to this?
Decide – What will I do?
Act – Do it
Quick loops, moving and iterating
“The best decision right now”

Pg 240 Global Guerrilla blog – John Robb
Vinay Gupta writings
Are you financially resilient? How can you improve this.