Social Media storm in a tea cup

Social media might be the latest fashion in communications strategy, but it doesn’t mean firms full understand how it affects them. There is a necessity for many firms entering the social media scene to evaluate some pretty core and fundamental cultural issues.

The problem is many social media projects are sold as the new must have by agencies or by internal PR functions keen to keep up with the Joneses. It is not normally looked at in greater detail.

While your consumer brand thrives on the boost given by a warm campaign based around giving out freebies, launching competitions and inviting photos, it sometimes hides problems that need to be addressed at planning stage.

Take a look at Twinings. Who could not like this warm and very British company, producing good quality tea and with a slick set of subtle adverts.

However, if you look at their own website there is a torrent of negative user generated comments pouring through, let alone their Facebook site. It seems a change to the blend has upset a large portion of their customer base that dislike the new blend brought in around June.

Looking around the social media sites and through their press release, there seems to be a key part of social media missing. There is nothing which engages with the customers whom find the new blend too lemony for their tastes. The closest to customer support seems to be talk of private correspondence confirming the change in product.

The Customer is Always Right

It might be an old adage, but the inaction is suprising for a brand with growing competition in the specialist tea market. Why would you buy an expensive blend you no longer like? Even if it leads others to experiment with other blends, it’ll lose customers as some will find that the supermarket own brand isn’t too bad.

There’s also a thought that a blend of Earl Grey available through the internet only or via specialist stores might actually retain loyalty. If its YOUR cuppa, then you’d be willing to pay a little more for the experience.

Brands are stronger than products



My other thought was the experience of Coca-Cola when they changed the formula of their drink.

Blind taste testing proved beyond doubt that a new formula was a preferred drink. So changing the
contents of a can should be an easy sell? Right?

We all know that wasn’t the case. The problem was that Coca-cola was the drink of choice for certain people. Changing the experience changed their relationship with the brand and made them sit up and think about why something seen as reliable and safe had changed.

I see the same issue here with Twinings. I’ve no idea which is the “better flavour”, but they’ve created an issue which could have been avoided. The person who buys a slightly different pack, is unsure about it, sits down and tastes the new blend will find their world has been changed a little. This makes them unsure about the world, the brand and the certainty the old blend gave them.

When I worked in radio, a change of DJ would cause a week of complaints, even if it was just for holiday cover. On the original DJs return, the same people would complain about the change.

Coca-Cola has learned from their experience. Have you ever wondered why they have so many diet colas? It’s not just to segment the market. They can launch the new TAB, or Zero cola whilst maintaining the original diet cola. Natural selection dictates whether the market fragments or replaces a moribund brand. Soap Powder companies have been doing it for years.

How could this have been avoided?

Good social media planning can avoid all the issues.

1.Is your organisation happy to be involved in an open, two way relationship with its customers. Not all firms are for reasons ranging from customer service strategy to resources available to quality of product to internal culture.

2.What social media will be entered into, who manages it and how.

3.What protocols do you have in place regarding topics, subjects, who should respond and when.

4.Putting in place a crisis management plan specifically for social media. Remember, silence is not an option and likely to be seen as an admission of guilt, even if you’re blameless.

5.What secondary channels can you use if their social media is flooded. Firms like Google use their blog to overcome torrents of feedback during outages. Traditional media is another useful channel despite obvious fears.

From the looks of it a big brand like Twinings haven’t grasped these five points. Deleting comments from your Facebook site and stoic silence is hardly a good strategy in the age of social media openness. It’s the second storm after an issue regarding the shifting of some operations to Poland and Twinings need to take a long hard look about how they react in future.

Just look at the problems caused to News of the World advertisers on social media. It doesn’t have to be an internal or controllable issue that causes a customer relations crisis.

The problem with good branding

Good branding is obvious and stands out in its environment to get your company’s messages out there in the open.

A well sited poster can direct those messages at thousands of people, creating an easily identifiable product or service.

Despite what people say, they do align themselves with brands even if it is an unconscious action. We all have our favourite snack or preferred clothes shop even if we don’t want their logos emblazoned across the backs.

But what happens when the branding is placed in the wrong environment? Or in the wrong context? How does that message appear?


During a short walk I carry out most days, I’m exposed to branding messages despite the journey taking me next to open fields. Whatever the intention, my personal reaction to the companies is negative.

I’m talking rubbish. The litter left at the side of the road and blown across open fields is something I’ve never been able to understand – far better to have a clean car than an unspoilt countryside?

It isn’t the firm’s fault that their logos are left as an eyesore, but they do have a responsibility. They also have an interest to ensure their brightly coloured logos don’t send the wrong message. It also says a lot about a company’s customers.

Creating Market segmentation through a litter survey


So just who are these litter louts? One technique is to look at trying to create a profile based on the information available. This is hardly a precise way of looking at things, but it does create interesting results.

So what did I find? Cigarette butts everywhere; left, right and centre. The brands are too indistinct to be noticed.


Discarded smoking packets were brand specific. Richmond, B&H and Lambert & Butler seemed to make up virtually all of the packets found. I could name a number of brands, but I didn’t see any of their packets.

The most noticeable was McDonalds. Cups, meal boxes and bags seemed to be everywhere. Interestingly, I didn’t notice any KFC litter despite having the same number of restaurants in the locality.

Snacks made up the majority of the litter. Coca-Cola, Tango, Fanta, Robinson’s flavoured water seem to be the drinks of choice with takeaway coffee cups also prevalent.

Walker’s crisps packets and multi-pack bag wrappers making up a sizeable portion of the snack rubbish. There was surprisingly few chocolate bar wrappers, and some litter from Jellybeans.
Larger cans made a few appearances through the undergrowth with Fosters seemingly the brand of choice.

From this we can create a profile of a thirst, larger drinking McDonald’s fan who likes Walkers crisps and smokes one of the two brands mentioned. You can imply age, sex and demography to a certain extent. The danger is to create a single profile, where there might be two or three.
One question I have is whether this profile could be replicated or whether it is particular to the route. Having lived in the countryside I’d suspect more the former.

Equally, although the litter is everywhere, it’s not a huge amount suggesting that the problem is caused by relatively few individuals.

So what are the solutions?

Packaging is far from straightforward. It’s quite interesting to look at the McDonald’s coffee cup which is much less obvious than many other items of its packaging. Its muted green still does stand out in the correct environment, but is a little more hidden in the long grass. Clever design can be invaluable.


Degradability is a red herring. Products can take around a year to degrade even if it’s degradable. It can help, but is far from being an answer. Litter bins? I doubt they’d help. Some research shows a badly placed bin can create litter problems by attracting too much rubbish for the level of collection available.

Education is the best solution. I remember my father challenged some youths dropping litter, and they politely suggested it was keeping someone in a job. Litter pickers don’t work in the countryside and even community service projects cover an insignificant portion of our roads and pathways.

It is somehow easier to drop, even when it’s not, because it’s ingrained. I’ve not really seen any campaign by leading companies to tackle the issue or fund it. Possibly they think the halo effect of litter is too bad to go near in case it admits liability.

The alternative is to shame the companies into helping educate the public, particularly the young, through surveying the brands that leave the litter. The survey could even be linked to school projects clearing an area near them.

Or even better, could the local McDonalds create this sort of campaign to reduce their share of the litter and educate the kids at the same time.

Too often litter education is untargeted and by looking at the rubbish dropped we can start to identify where to target education. Equally punitive measures like a rubbish tax affects all companies. The most interesting thing in my small scale survey was the brand specific nature of the rubbish.

And finally, if it is you who has dropped the litter, carry it a little bit further and drop it in a bin.

Contemplating Jaume Plensa

Normally when I sit down to write up a blog of an event or happening, I like to sit down straight away and relate the experience while the memories are still fresh in my mind.

Due to a hectic four days, I've not been able to this time and, in a way, I'm glad because I've reflected on the Jaume Plensa exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It is also fitting as, in his introduction, Jaume told us "We do not spend enough time in our own space just thinking."

This is demonstrated by a pair of glass brick boxes, just smaller than a telephone booth, that both cut you off from the outside world yet are open and airy. I thought that entering the box would be claustrophobic but far from it. The muffled sounds of the outside world and bright lit space was calming and a place to think, even if its thinking of nothing.

Jaume also said the themes of his work were the self and in the confusion caused by conflicting communication channels that dominate our lives. I personally felt the work was more of the self.

Despite promising to visit for more years than I can remember, this was my first visit to the sculpture park. Jaume Plensa's imposing crouched figures make an impact from the moment you enter the park, with a figure high on a plinth. The figures placed in the park look part of the outstanding scenery across the Valley despite being far from natural.

The silvery bodies view the vistas in calm reflection as if considering themselves and their lives, taking inspiration from their surroundings. Made of letters, these stunning and lifelike sculptures are meant to show how something as simple as a letter turns to a word, sentence, idea and on to being something more like a book.



And this is where my own reflections come in to play. The day after my visited, I was at Twycross Zoo with my family. The zoo specialises in caring for monkeys and I saw how they, like the statues, sat crouched with their arms wrapped around their legs contemplating their surroundings. Monkey's also see a smile as threatening behaviour and they show happiness when relaxed and with a downward turn to the mouth.

Thinking about the pieces in the Yorkshire Scultpure Park, it shows how Jaume Plensa has created something primal and slightly melancholic. But the melancholy isn't something sad, but just a reflective mood that shows a future hope and renewal of spirit.

One of the pieces is made from mesh and have a ghostly quality. You can never quite see them and the they don't impinge on the view but are always there and present. Another sees a series of figures hugging saplings in a quiet area of the gardens.



The exhibition is in two distinct areas. As well as the sculptures in the gardens, there are those in the underground galleries. You move from the brightness of the outside to the dark subterranean world. Had Jaume Plensa not said so, this reserved Englishman would have missed half of the exhibition. The experience is as much about touch and sound as it is about the visual art.

The galleries have a long curtain of verses strung from floor to ceiling separating the outside world from the interior. Running your hand across the letters make them chime, with the tintinnabulations evoking Jaume Plensa's memories of a beaded curtain from his childhood home.

The first gallery has the same crounched figures on the wall in the see no evil, hear no evil and say no evil. The evil here is the stress and anxiety of modern living rather than behaviour. The theme is replicated in the next room with three giant heads looking inwardly at each other.



The third gallery is an experience in itself and photographs do no do it justice. The six foot high elongated heads are lit brightly in a dark room and are so unexpected compared to the other rooms. Similar to the giant head Jaume created near St Helens, these androgynous and beautifully lifelike faces are calm and serene. Although digitally created, they feel ancient and almost living. Their feels to be a presence in the room as if something living inhabits the heads, may be only opening the closed eyes after midnight. A magical set of sculptures.

The final gallery is filled with gongs of varying tones which resound throughout the exhibition space. These red gold gongs are in a circle, filled with the words from the song of songs in the old testament.

The end room shows more detail and information about Jaume Plensa's life and work. It includes a mobile, lit deliberately to make the shadows as much part of the work of art as the figures clinging on to the mobile almost for dear life. This work is constantly changing as the strands of the mobile move round.

Before leaving, I climbed the hill to see the one, major sculpture as tall as a house, looking out across the valley. The work is totally different viewed from the inside than from the outside. With the light fading, it was also fascinating to see how the silver letter sculptures changed from bright silver to red tinged figures to dull grey before being lit up to being almost white beacons shining across the panorama.

My overall impression was this was as good an art exhibition as I remember seeing. This is partly down to the setting of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Having also been to the Compton Verney gallery in Warwickshire a few days after, the vistas of Capability Brown have nothing on the Yorkshire countryside when finding locations for sculptures. No white room in a London gallery could do the sculptures justice either.

The alabaster heads in the third gallery stayed with me, along with the inner contemplation of many of the works and will for a time to come.

The exhibition is on between the 9 April 2011 - 25 September 2011. For more information, visit the YSP website

How important are local newspapers to the community?

This was a question that I wrestled with when asked to fill in a survey recently. Even at the time I thought this a complex issue that could hardly be answered by ticking one box over another box.

This wasn’t even the question on the survey, but my own thought. The actual question was over communities and whether newspapers are an essential part of an effective local community. My answer is no – but that is doing newspapers a disservice.

Why did I say no? Community does not need newspapers partly because there are alternatives from the old fish wives gossiping to social media and beyond. Partly because local newspapers are so different and their role is so diverse that you couldn’t really identify what its core purpose is. Finally, what is a community and how big a geography does it cover? IS it even bound by geography?

What it is true to say is that local newspapers are a social glue. They bind people together by imparting information and requesting feedback. This isn’t just a noticed board for events and minutes of meetings. It also offers information over crime and punishment, emotional stories and pleas of help.

If I think of my own area, there are several layers of newspaper that make layers like an onion of community information. Starting at the Wharfe Valley Times, the news is focused mainly on charitable events, school projects and sports news. In fact, the main reason people read it isn’t the news but the car and house adverts. Go up a layer and you have the Yorkshire Evening Post, a good metropolitan evening paper focusing on crime and human interest stories. There’s also the Wharfdale and Airedale Observer, a rural focused weekly looking at life towards Ilkley and awy from Leeds City Centre. Then there is the Yorkshire Post, the newspaper read by the business community and those in the know from Scarborough to Sheffield.

Comparing local papers also gives you a flavour of key interests and how fast paced life is. I grew up with a weekly paper focussed on the rural community a world away from the Barnsley Chronicle.

But if I do what local information, is the newspaper the best or only way of accessing it? With an increasingly open information society, public information is increasingly available and, if you don’t understand the figures, there’s sure to be some person developing an app. to explain it. There are blogs, twitter feeds, community message boards and real events which allow me to engage in the community at a deeper level. My sense of community is not dictated to by the news agenda.

Equally, community has become disjointed. Is my community where I live? Where my children go to school? Where I work? Where I play sport? They are all of these things. When I was growing up all were available in reasonably small area, but now I can travel to different areas to engage with different areas of my life.

I think this is why newspapers have struggled. There is information relevant to me in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus, the Harrogate Advertiser, The Wakefield Express and the Bradford Telegraph. It would be unfeasible for me to buy all these newspapers. Add in the school publications, the parish magazines, the sports club quarterly newsletter and it’s a mass of information I don’t necessarily have the time to consume.

Newspapers also have never recovered from the age of the internet and still struggle online. Their role has been superseded whether its small ads, selling homes and cars, message boards and piped information services. They also struggle with the balance of free information over paid for content.

Each person has their own communities they want to keep in touch with and newspapers are so restrictive in how you can access and consume information. To be effective, they need to be that social glue – responding to the needs of their community and not trying to dictate the agenda. They need to look at what is required and bundle those services in a branded offering. It is different in different places. They also need to look at how I could get the business news from the Evening Post, say, the sports reports on Bradford City from the Telegraph and Argus, my Facebook feed of friends and the message board from my sports club. People are already creating piped services that cut out the newspapers and people can create their own feeds of information.

The difficulty is working out who pays for the service at what point. Technology and newspapers can engage communities whether geographic or virtual. The final question is whether we want to remain a disparate group of individuals flitting between communities, or whether we want to go back to living in a local community where all our needs are met within a small geography. There are benefits and disadvantages to both, but personally I feel we have become a little too well travelled and need to discover what’s on our doorstep and re-engage in our locality. May be we would value our local newspapers more if we did.

Image: healingdream / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Why cuts to the arts budget is an advantage

While many in the arts a bemoaning the cuts to the grants received from the arts council, at least one Yorkshireman sees the flipside of the situation. Far from being a problem, it is an opportunity. Now opportunities aren’t handed out on a plate, but his belief is that the cuts give the arts a chance to show its creativity and create new business models.

What can’t be allowed to happen is the loss of arts in the region or nationally.
This was message from John Godber at the First Friday event in Wakefield. His appearance at the Cedar Court Hotel was one of his first for his new theatre company now based at the Wakefield Theatre Royal.

Along with the theatre’s director Murray Edwards, there was optimism for the future, not just for the headline grabbing plays created by Godber, but also for the youth and community projects which use the facilities on an almost daily basis.

Restrictions tend to follow grants and it is these restrictions which are now removed from the business model. The challenge is to persuade private money that there is an advantage to getting involved in the arts. To paraphrase, how can you be creative if you don’t have inspiration.

The loss of Government funding is a loss to the arts community and this presents a challenge. But it is not the only challenge for John Godber. He’s left a theatre and company he’s built up for well over twenty years to start from scratch. The new company needs to establish a reputation but it does create a freedom to start afresh.
There is a commercial realty to the challenge.

It might be easier to obtain sponsorship for a new play written by one of the greatest living British playwright than for an educational group dealing with unemployed teenagers, but both are valuable. The argument might be that the workshops offering skills, confidence and life skills to NEATS, an endemic problem in the Wakefield district, is far more valuable to the business community than exposure to a theatre audience.

Equally, the acting community tends to have more than one vocation. Training, community projects and other endeavours tend to provide the basis for a jobbing actor to also do what they love – appearing on stage or screen. While the big names might get a living wage, that can’t always be said for the stock characters and ensemble roles. It’s a far more complicated interdependency between the headline performances and the community workshops which may not even result in a performance.

Convincing businesses that there is real opportunity in the arts isn’t easy. Bizarrely the focus on the funding cuts does help in showing what could be lost to a community. John Godber said losing arts provision is like losing a playing field and isn’t felt straight away. Like Arthritis, it erodes over time from a mild annoyance to a severe problem. Losing community projects weakens the community and loses skills. Highlighting the good work at risk means companies are better placed to find synergies and understand that supporting a project for the homeless,NEATS, the elderly or the disabled could bring greater benefits in terms of local reputation, audience and reciprocal benefit.

Having commercial packages and sponsorship in some ways is a cop out. It is an easy way of getting in front of known an audience. Funding a project that gives hope to young people who feel failed by the education system identifies potential new employees, recognition from the community and creating economic activity in the local economy.

The new venture in Wakefield comes at a strange time with the Arts Council announcement, but another plus must be the key artistic developments in the region. Three years ago you might not class Wakefield as an artistic hub, but with the creation of the Art House studios, the creation of the Hepworth Gallery and the success of the art walks there has been a real boon for the district. The Leeds Fringe and the other developments in Leeds means there is a real opportunity for Yorkshire to be a cultural centre envied by other regions.

There are also valuable lessons in life and business. Where one door closes, another door opens. Turning round bad news into good is difficult but can only be achieved through creativity. And as I’ve mentioned before, where would we be without the inspiration of the arts.

Image: scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Fringe: Leeds and the Culture Vultures

I've blogged on the Culture Vultures blog on this subject. To view the article, please go here

The power of collaboration

I’m a believer that no one has a great idea. Good ideas only become great when they get passed around, discussed and improved on by several people. I am also a fan of the US approach to new technology where companies in the Silicon Valley share commercially sensitive intellectual property in order to fast-track their development and create new products.

There is a way of using twitter or a chat application to foster these ideas and share the expertise others that requires a little over an hour of time a month. It also has the added benefit of raising your profile, promoting your business and making you as thought leader.

I’m still surprised that twitter events aren’t more commonplace. I first came across #PRStudchat a while back. A US PR practitioner called Deidre Breakenridge created a forum for discussing the PR industry by encouraging students, lecturers and people from the industry to discuss issues relevant to them. Within the first few chats, contributions started coming in from across the globe going well beyond the group she had targeted. Since then, Deidre has had working trips to Europe, including the UK, based on the profile generated by #PRstudChat.

Other examples include #Edchat, channel 4s #twinge and #SN4BW (social networking for business women.

So how can I take advantage of this event? Like all things, the idea is simple, but you will require some leg work to get the initial idea off the ground. It also helps if you have something interesting to say yourself.

1. Work out who you want to talk to and about what.
2. Look for people may be key influencers. In Deidre’s case, getting the buy in from lecturers brought with it groups of students. You will also need a critical mass to make the first ‘event’ a success.
3. Think about when you want to hold the event and an appropriate name for the event. When is convenient for the people you are trying to communicate with?
4. Create a hashtag and check it doesn’t clash with anything else being used on twitter.
5. Raise awareness of the event using social media and direct marketing, asking for questions. Don’t keep the format too open ended as this will reduce the questions being set.
6. Create very simple rules so you can identify the question and possibly area of expertise.

How it works:
1. Add your own questions to the ones suggested, ordering them to create a theme/narrative for the discussion. You’ll need six to ten questions for an hour.
2. Start the event just before the advertised time telling people the ‘rules’ and format of the event.
3. Open with the first question, may be offering an answer to get the ball rolling. It might be helpful to get a few close friends/colleagues to add opinions or even play devil’s advocate.
4. Respond back to the discussions being created and/or to individuals.
5. When the replies dry up or 5-10 minutes later, post the next question and repeat.
6. At the end of the discussion, formally close the chat, thanking participants.
7. You may want to invite people to give feedback or take a quick survey using a tool like survey monkey.

By now you’ve had a valuable conversation, covering a number of areas and enabling you to understand whether your views fit in with or challenge your peers. As host, the valuable discussions reflect well on you even if they’ve been created by others. But there’s more you can do now the event is over.

The next day, harvest the comments by searching for the hashtag. Report on the discussion in your own blog, write a press release, newsletter or use the responses as market research. This expands the reach of the event and acts as advertising for the next event. Make sure you understand what a personal view is and what a corporate position of a company or individual is.

Over a number of months, you’ll develop a wider following and find people you’d never find any other way. Think how you can take it further to make the discussion fresh. You could create a ‘real’ event or even finding a sponsor

Just remember, not everyone is on twitter – particularly students – so you might need to explain twitter or how to sign up to a chat application. You’ll also need to ensure you have someone who can step in if you can’t host the event for whatever reason.

Image courtesey of freedigitalphotos.net

The Social Media Paradox or why SMEs have the advantage

I was having a discussion with a small business owner over the use of social media. His view was that it wasn’t worth investigating. His limited team couldn’t even start to compete with big business which has the resource to invest heavily in social media managers, operatives and agency support.

He felt it was pointless to even try as his best efforts could not match the inventiveness and scale of the campaigns he’s seen. The businessman had played around with some social media on a personal level but didn’t really engage heavily in it.

This approach led me to think whether this was true. It is hard to remember that only a few years ago, few businesses large or small engaged through social media and there was that window of opportunity where entrepreneurial spirit in the social media world allowed some small firms to rise to prominence.

Companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsico have gradually been shifting their massive advertising budget over to PR and online marketing campaigns. Look at a company like Dell sifting through social media data to continuously audit feedback and proactively eliminate customer complaints. Even government departments are spending vast amounts of money on ensuring their messages are being received and are monitoring how they are being discussed.

A company like Sony employs an agency to promote its activities in the social media world and its almost expected that a technology savvy company has integrated video, images and copy. Even the strict rules of the financial industry are being tested as banks, led by First Direct, are exploring how to best use social media tools to advise its customers and promote their products.

How could a small one man band operation compete with a promotion like Morphy Richards World Ironing Championships, for example.

If this were advertising or pure marketing, you might have a point, but there is a paradox with social media. The more successful you are at social media you become, the worse you are at social media. Whatever social medium you use, the point is to engage and interact with a community. Much of the work doesn’t even need to be done by yourself, as the community can do it for you.

Once you reach a critical mass, however, it becomes tricky to engage in the same way. Is it really possible to listen to the postings of 2,000 people in the same way you listen to 80? Can you respond to your followers in the same personal and well thought out way? Can you categorise your audience as neatly, ensuring you deliver to all of them.

The answer is no. There may even be a rise in the churn of your followers or an increase in spammers slogging up your social media accounts. With more people, there is a need for more time – and let’s remember it might not be your organisations raise en detra to use interact on the web.

The smaller firm doesn’t need to chase followers. They can establish a good core audience of loyal customers, suppliers and brand ambassadors. LEGO select a small handful of bloggers each year to review their products, and this tactic can work whatever your size.

I’ve always seen engagement as conversation in a pub, say. There’s a chap at the bar with a crowd around him, and he’s telling tall tales. The conversation might be entertaining, but the value is low. Two people can be having a business conversation in the corner planning an idea that will make them a fortune. Which conversation is more valuable? It’s a no brainer yet companies often get blinded by the numbers and miss the point. Would you rather one repeat buyer or a handful of one off purchases? Take the example of Millies’ twitter account in Leeds which ensures the family run shop remains distinctive and accessible to its loyal shoppers.

If you want to go big and escape the niche, there are examples of the SMEs that have gone big. Take Tailor Thomas Mahon and his blog, or Gary Vaynerchuk’s wine tasting videos. And how about the Creme Brulee Man and his twitter account.

If you’re still not sure whether to use social media to help your business, just join in, listen to your customers and engage with them. What’s the worst that can happen?

Image courtesey of freedigitalphotos.net

Are you Celebrating Twixtmas?

As well as Christmas and New Year, will you also be celebrating Twixtmas?

Over the last two years the Twixtmas movement has been growing.

Originally, it was a word developed by the US travel industry to describe the period between Christmas and New Year so they could promote these vacations.

The word has been hi-jacked by Andy Green, the man behind Beat Blue Monday, to promote a better way of celebrating this period.

As a rule the five days are sent doing very little apart from the odd sales shop and a visit or two to relatives. In reality, much of the time is spent eating, drinking and watching films on the television.

The Twixtmas campaign urges people to do something for other people, the planet or something beneficial to your future. It's a nice idea and offers people the chance to find their own level of engagement.

- The first day of Twixtmas is about spoiling yourself and thinking more positively about you, enjoy an indulgence.

- The second day of Twixtmas is to do something for someone else, help a neighbour or good cause.

- The third day of Twixtmas is to help a friend or maybe get in touch with someone you have not called in a while.

- The fourth day of Twixtmas is about doing something for the planet.

- The fifth day of Twixtmas is to do something for your future, maybe think about your goals for 2011 or learn a new skill.

So for day four you could do everything from recycling your cards to setting up a neighbourhood litter pick using up you Christmas scraps rather than throwing them away. Equally, if you miss the odd day, it doesn't really matter.

In such a time poor society, it is sometimes good to have a focus on such days and I'll be drawing up my Twixtmas list soon

There is a brilliant presentation on ‘How to start a mass movement in 3 minutes’ by Derek Sivers, an inspirational entrepreneur speaking at a TED conference that springs to mind Andy's quest. But if everyone is having fun and the world's made that little bit brighter by your actions, then everyone gains something.

So will you join in this year? You can find out more at Twixtmas.com.

The Pudsey Pudding – Christmas on a giant scale

Christmas shopping, something caught my eye in the window of a charity shop.
It wasn’t the thought that this would be an ideal present - far from it. I can’t really think of many people I’d want to give it too.

Let me explain. It was a print, possibly an original print, of a newspaper item from 1846. The local article demonstrated an event that made Pudsey a well known place in England long before anyone had knitted a bear for the BBC. It was also seemed festive, although I later found this not quite to be true.

Although public relations is seen as a modern practice, it’s something practiced for millennia even if the term “PR” is something new.

This article talked of the Pudsey Pudding, a giant steamed Christmas pudding, made in the town to celebrate the repeal of the Corn Laws. The gesture had to be original and capture the mood that saw one of the most unpopular laws in British History consigned to the dustbin. The pud represented the end of an import duty that left many poor people starving and the gesture saw a democratic sharing of a celebratory dish made by the community, for the community.

The pudding may have been made to a Christmas recipe but it was actually steamed on 31st July by the radical free traders of Pudsey. The details are staggering even to the modern media. I’ve seen a “world record tower of pompadoms” that looked barely two foot tall and managed to squeeze into the papers:

The result was a pudding weighing nearly 1000 lbs.

Twenty housewives each mixed her twentieth share to the proper ingredients ready for the final blending.

One of the dye-pans at Crawshaw Mill was thoroughly cleaned and filled with spring water.

The twenty dames, with assistance, brought their twenty bowls containing the mixed flour, fruit and suet and tipped them into a large and strong and new canvas "poke" specially made for that purpose, and by means of a windlass which had been fixed over the pan, the "weighty matter" was hoisted into the vessel.

For three days and three nights the pudding was kept boiling, along with half a dozen smaller puddings, to keep it company.

On July 31, 1846, the pudding was craned out of the huge copper and placed upon a wherry. There the steaming monster sat in triumph, with the smaller puddings around it.

A procession was formed, and went round the town, with thousands of people looking on.

The final scene was in Crawshaw Fields, where tables had been arranged in the form of a large military square, and with a special "spade" provided for the purpose, the pudding was "dug up" and served to the crowd."

This historic story shows that communication has always been key. Engage a community with a common purpose is the “new PR” of the social media age – yet this feat could not have been created without a real community coming together.

May be the modern media is trying to re-engage with a sense of community that is fragmented and no longer as strong as it was in those days. May be we don’t have the political events to celebrate.

Sadly the largest Christmas Pudding no longer resides this side of the Pennines. The current record weighed is 7,231 pounds, and was made in Aughton, Lancashire, on July 11, 1992. The village has a once every 21-year tradition of producing puddings to celebrate the cutting of their reed beds.

I can only see records going back to 1886, so may be it was inspired by the Pudsey Pudding – let me know if you have more information than I do.

But there is an opportunity for Pudsey to get find some community spirit again and regain the title and start a friendly war of the roses. Aughton is due to break the record again in mid July 2013, so maybe we should start planning for the 31st of July and hold the record for 21-years.

How many ways can you peel a Banana?

No this blog isn’t a PC version of how many ways can you skin a cat. When I first saw the question “How does a monkey eat a banana?”, I thought it was a joke. But the answer wasn’t because he found it ape-peeling.

What’s more the answer came in a video, the video that’s featured below. After trying the monkey peeling method it got me thinking of a lot of different things.



It is actually easier to peel and the stalk acts like a handle. Equally, you don’t get to chew on the bit on the end that tastes pithy.

What if you just assume you know how to peel a banana and skip the video? One thing I’ve l heard from older business people is that they’ve tried everything once, so it’s not worth trying it again. That might be true to an extent. There are few truly original ideas. However, societies change and opportunities can be missed by not looking at other viewpoints. The hotel that still sends out its direct marketing via the post is adding massively to its costs by not considering electronic messaging and promotion.

The company that ignores social media to connect with its customers can’t engage with them. They then can’t find out what they truly feel towards their products, services and brand.

Learning to eat something like a banana is a meme. We don’t know where we learnt it but it must have been from watching our parents eat bananas. The stalk looks so obviously like a lever that it must be the ring pull of the natural world. Let’s not forget that the fruit was still fairly rare in the UK even up to the 1950s so it is still a relatively new food to these shores.

It’s not just the British. I’ve yet to see any mainstream American or European media featuring upside down banana eating – yet in the countries where bananas are grown, this is not unusual and they’ve developed their own meme for peeling a banana.
There is an assumption that our ‘meme’ is best, that the lessons of our fathers are better than those from other cultures. The problem is that these prejudices are often subconscious and the British way to be understood is to shout louder and more slowly. It is not about understanding the cultural landscape or listening to alternative ways of working.

Take the Greek example. A shake of the head tends to mean yes in that country, and the word Nai means yes. A nod and the word Ochi means no. It is counter intuitive to most of Europe and these differences can lead to mistakes.

In my work life I’ve often had to translate the cultural aspect of a business or news story. Think of a company in the UK that’s made a new product made from recycled plastic. It’s a great selling point on the environmental side of things – right?

Well, it depends where you are selling that item and in which markets. Yes the environment is high on the consumer agenda in most European countries, but is this a key point everywhere in a recession? What about countries where recycled products have an image of inferiority or a potential health risk? The facts may be clear on this area, but a public perception can be damaging even if it is wrong.

We’ve all heard the stories about how American working practices were shoehorned into the UK in the 1960s and 70s or the stories of product names that just don’t translate tastefully.

Another good example of why memes mean different things to different people comes from Andy Green on the Greenblog. His posting pointed out that Cheverolet dislike the term “chevy” to describe their products, despite the shorthand being so common in US culture and beyond. To the company, it cheapens the image of the brand yet they’ve not tried to find a different way for people to associate with the name. The company is trying to raise awareness of their brand in the UK, and I’d have thought people would associate a little more with the term Chevy.

What’s my advice? Try it out for yourself and learn a different way to do something. I’m not talking just about bananas, but the way you do business.

Learning points:

• Remember a meme is just one way to peel a banana.
• Your way may be good, but is there a better way
• Just because you understand something, it doesn’t mean that everyone gets it, or finds it straightforward.

Getting a sense of community in the snow

The weather has brought more than a knee deep torrent of snow, freezing the icy hills of Leeds into an impassable blockade. It has also brought about a sense of community which tends to vanish as fast as the snow vanished under the heat from the sun. But while it lasts, hopefully we will be able to rediscover the joys of community.

I’ve been thinking about community thanks to events like TEDxLeeds and the launch of the Leeds Community News Hub. Hopefully this blog will draw together some key learning points into something demonstrable.

On a basic level, the snow actually brings people out. Bizarrely the bad weather forces us out of the comfort of our cars and onto the streets. Most people on my street have been walking to work, or at least to the bus stop. Rather than rushing past they’ve been stopping to chat.

While one foolish driver attempted to get up one of the steepest roads in my area, first one, then two then three and four people went over to help push the back of the car. The car got up the hill, but it was a sense of community that helped get the vehicle up over the hill and onto the top road.

Community can be defined as people coming together for a common purpose or for a shared interest. I’ve also heard comment that communities are not created. They are sometimes latent, but rarely can you force a death metal music fan to enjoy watching the X-factor.

I think communications professionals miss the point about latent communities. They sometimes hit on a community in need of a social glue and mistake it for creating a new community that hasn’t existed before.

On my street, I’ve always tried to keep my driveway clear – mainly so I can get my two wheel drive cars out if there was an emergency. Last year I got some comments from neighbours saying I should keep up the good work, and one negative comment that I was wasting my time and causing more ice to form. The area near my cars cleared sooner and the other half of the cul de sac turned into a skating rink.

This year I did the same. I noted that many of the 4x4 vehicles able to drive on the snow used my ‘cleared’ area as it was less slippy. Unfortunately the warm tyres create ice tracks which are nigh on impossible to shift – but shift it slowly I do.

Now a couple of days ago, a few of my neighbours were out clearing the space out of their drives. We engaged in conversation and discussed the weather, the airport, the struggles of other locals on the roads and general chit chat.

Today that escalated. Far from just clearing the drives, we moved on to the main bit of the cul de sac. There were more of us and we had a common purpose – clearing the snow.

We’d created a community. We’d also created momentum and were picking up on the latent potential of the cul de sac. More people came out to help. One person joked to a twenty something girl that she’d have to bring her shovel out when she came back. Amazingly she took the joke to heart and came out to help. One of the men with a 4x4 took up the shovel and snow plough despite not needing to. In no time at all, the cul de sac was cleared.

Further down, the hill section of our road had been cleared and now just a narrow strip of road is still clarried with snow.

Once a community becomes successful and an aim seems achievable, you can draw in people to the community- much like a blackhole draws in material around it because of its gravity. The caveat is that those who might join in the community must have a latent interest in joining the group.

And what of the one person who made the negative comment? Well they’re enjoying the benefits of the community, but is one person I’ve yet to see with shovel, snow plough or brush in hand - proving that you can’t force people to join a community.

To recap:
• Community can be defined as people coming together for a common purpose or for a shared interest.
• Communities are not created
• Some communities are latent and need some way of bring people together
• Some potential community members may not be active
• Creating achievable aims for a community can invigorate it and create a movement and gravitational pull for potential new members
• You cannot force someone into joining a community

Why are we measuring happiness?

There is a misconception that measuring happiness is somehow un-economic. Big Businesses don’t do it, so why should we? Surely we can work out that less police means more crime, and few cleaners in hospitals means dirtier wards?

These are the sort of comments seen in the media and from high profile commentators. If you do understand economics, though, happiness is an integral part of the study. There is an ugly word, utility, that is used to describe economic happiness and it’s factored into a lot of theory.

Granted, a very basic pure free market economics ignores utility in the main, dividing resources down to the most economical outcome without affecting an individual. But I’ve always felt that if you can redistribute a resource that makes one individual slightly worse off, it could be justified if the resource boosts the overall economy by a larger amount

The Laffer curve is an easy example demonstrating personal happiness. It measures labour against pay and appears as a hump or a hill shape. Basically, the more we are paid the more we will work, up until the point where we have the money to enjoy our leisure time and still maintain a good standard of living. Why work 24/7 if you can afford a big house, expensive holidays and a horse to ride?

The demand for goods and services is measured using utility. Why buy filet steak when you can buy sirloin? It is because we enjoy the flavour more and see a stronger demand. Politicians often like to think of themselves as economists, but this is an example of where most get it wrong.

The question is why should happiness values be so divisive and seen as a gimmick? The problem is that utility is very hard to measure, and even those measure that are used can be more trend lead than something you can look at in isolation. On this basis these first figures are not that useful and are merely a first step.

Because they are hard to measure, people haven’t bothered with it and have ignored it. Traditional measures seem to work on the whole so the status quo has continued. Cameron has tried to show that the UK is leading this field. This isn’t true. Several countries have been using these measures like France.

So how does it work? We can also see the economic figures of GDP, RPI and so forth, but we also need to understand about confidence, likes and dislike. The stress of spiralling inflation or interests can affect someone’s state of mind. An individual carries these in to work and they don’t perform as well.

The nation becomes less healthy through poor diet and they again can become less economically useful in certain industries where physicality is an issue. Something like the Olympics can lift the nation. The Ashes might either lift or depress a section of the population. Although financially, a road building problem might seem marginal, the relief of stress on commuters could see a boost to the economy.

It is measured by surveying people about how they feel about aspects of their life. The questions are not yes or no and getting the questions right is key to finding the right answers.

It is the smaller decisions, rather than the big questions, that happiness measures should affect. Equally, it isn’t a question of more of one or less of another. It might be which one of two projects should be cut or which of two is better value.

In a work environment, how would you feel if tea and coffee facilities were removed from your office and you were not expected to leave your desk. Would your work levels increase? Logic might say yes because you are now working for the 15 minutes it takes to brew and drink your beverage.

But another logic suggests the brain might work better after a short pause to clear the mind and set it ready for the task ahead. The workers are happier as well as they can demonstrate community spirit (getting the round in) and chat for a limited period. Now extend that into laws on work time and breaks.

One thing to remember is the measure follows unhappiness as well, so real areas of concern can be highlighted.

If you want to know more about the subject there is a great TEDx presentation that explains it in an even more accessible way from Chip Connley.

Behind the scenes of the Northern Art Prize

It is not often you get a chance to have a sneak preview of a significant event or product. When I was invited to see behind the scenes at the Northern Art Prize, exhibited at Leeds Art Gallery from the 26th November, I couldn’t refuse.

I have an appreciation of art but I am no critic. The blogger event wasn’t aimed at critical appreciation, but of opening a discussion and debate about the Northern Art Prize and its accessibility. The people who ‘know’ about art will be aware of the event but the very word art sometimes puts people off experiencing work they might just enjoy. The event attempted to address this by finding honest comment on the works as they prepare for exhibition.

Another part of seeing behind the scenes is appreciating the hard work that goes into creating an exhibition. Seeing the works of art as they are being assembled, or re-assembled, shows how much work is needed to put an installation in place. Even those who experience the works of art can miss the appreciation on the organisation, logistics and time consuming precision needed to place everything just right.

Most exhibitions have a theme but what was remarkable about the works of art on display was they worked as a collection despite being selected individually. Liverpool still seemed to be a cultural reference and with it themes of industry, migration and multi-culturalism. The works we were able to see had positivity and playfulness; even when looking at bigger socio-political subjects.



Alec Finlay’s four glass blown apples was the first exhibit that caught the eye. To me apples bring to mind the countryside and orchards, having been brought up in the Midlands close to the apple growers of Hereford and Worcestershire. The shear skill required to create such delicate and natural looking apples is impressive in itself but placed on a white background in pairs, you can’t help but look at the differences.



Another of his works is a bowl of seaside rock pieces with the words You have to choose to be chosen written in it. Other than a comment on the prize itself, and the fact it’s fun, I’m not sure what else it says. The same could be said for rock, paper, scissors ARC (Sofia), a neon sculpture showing the childhood game.



Unfortunately the audio-visual display from Haroon Mirza in the same room was not there. The combination of three works called Anthemoessa (the islands in Greek mythology where the sirens come from) will interact with each other and Edward Armitage’s painting The Siren. This sounds intriguing and I want to see how it works. Unlike most of the other works, this installation will have a strong audio element.



David Jaques work North Canada – English Electric also has an audio element but we were unable to hear it. There are two stereoscopic viewers, a Victorian 3D invention created by overlapping two slightly different images through the viewer.



Although only two viewers are set up, the wall is adorned with masses of the image plates. The black and white industrial landscapes is compelling as social history but the work is also structured well so the collection as a whole is visually attractive.



Across from the room is a cabinet filled with bottles in another work by Alec Finlay. Each one has an essential oil in it written as an Acrostic poem. It invites you to look into the cabinet and the poems are more intriguing than the mere cabinet display itself.

David Jaques work Por Convencion Ferrer charts a fictitious conference and journey of a Spanish anarchist through Liverpool. He’d visited Liverpool in 1908 but without the notes, I wouldn’t understand this from the work. The meetings are advertised on silken pennants that suggest a link with the trade unions and their banners and hang together as a collection of finally made banners – although I understood the concept, this side of the exhibit was a little lost on me. But it does stand on its own as a visual piece.



The final exhibit on show is a huge number of works which make a bigger piece. Lubaina Himid’s Jelly Mould Pavillions is something you could spend hours looking at and still find something new that catches your eye. It’s made from a number of jelly moulds, each one designed very differently meaning you can appreciate each mould as a separate work as well as the vista created by the piece as a whole.



The work has railway set models added to it, giving the jelly moulds a human context. A range of interesting characters from balloon sellers to sailors to children to adults have been carefully placed on the exhibit interacting with the moulds. There are also trees and cars adding to the scene.



One more element is the plans of the exhibition are laid out. These pictures contain the backstories for each mould. The notes suggest the exhibit tells something about the afro-British culture created from the migrant communities. There is certainly an African feel to some of the moulds, but it’s not a forthright display of black culture, more a collection of themes many of which reflect that side of the work.



This is my view, and I think I’ve sounded more like a critic than a voice of the common man (the later my intention). I can be sceptical of the installation lead art shown in galleries. A pile of bricks in a Burges art gallery didn’t move me at all, neither did a black square. But these works did on the whole connect with me. It is hard to comment fully on the work in an uncompleted form. Those who I met had their own views about The Northern Art prize which lead to a discussion on why the art seemed thematic and how the selection processed was reached. I’m certainly looking forward to returning to see the completed work and getting the full impact.

If you’re not the usual art goer, this is accessible and child friendly to a degree. There will be more to see and hear than I’ve described and best of all it is free to wonder round if you’re looking for some respite from the weather or the Christmas shopping over the next month or so.

Hopefully it will inspire the region’s artists in the same way that Liverpool has inspired the artists on display. With the opening of the Hepworth Gallery next May and a number of artistic projects being set up, it certainly is an exciting time for art in Yorkshire and the North. If that happens, hopefully the general public will also be able to get more involved reclaiming the arts from an elitist persuit.

You can find out more about the the Northern Art Prize, follow the event on twitter or use the hashtag #northernartprize

TEDx and the City (Leeds) Part 2

The second half of TEDxLeeds opened with Stuart Childs Eulogising of Audioboo. Although Stuart uses it in a different way to me, I’ve been a firm admirer of Audioboo. The application accessible on iphones and the web, enables you to record up to five minutes of speech or sound and post it like a blog.

On one level it is a podcast platform but it is something much more creative as well. Stuart made the comment that its founder Mark Rock created it after lamenting that he never recorded the speech of his grandmother after she died.

I hadn’t realised this when I met Mark Rock at a Connect Yorkshire event in Sheffield when he was a key speaker at one of the organisation’s events. As I used to be in radio, I totally get the power of sound and the theatre of the mind. Why not just have video with pictures? Because the pictures are better on radio.

It is a different medium and we are a visual society that we sometimes forget the power of the US radio production of HG Wells War of the Worlds, the power of hearing the Bradford City fire by the match commentator that day or the brilliance of someone like Kenny Everett in editing sounds together to produce radio comedy.

Stuart likes collecting sounds and discussed how they are emotive. The sound of your school bell, the public transport, the ambience of a workplace, factory, market or city centre. What we don’t get is the sense of how this changes. Would we recognise the sound of Leeds in 20-30 years time? My father grew up in Leeds but had been away from the city for a long time before I came back and he noticed a distinct change in the Leeds accent.

This brought him on to the UK Sound Map, a project to collect sounds as memories and historical documents. What might not seems important now, might be valuable to historians or social commentators in the future.

I see there’s a strong use for Audioboo as a tool to interview and store information. Seeing as it is a week of remembrance, we have just lost are last WW1 veterans and there is a value of collecting the stories of those involved in the second world war from Bletchley Park to the Coventry Blitz to soldiers and those whose lives were affected at home.

The next presentation was a video from Pranar Misore who flipped the concept of bringing the real world into the digital world, by discussing how the digital world can be brought into the real world.

What I found interesting was the way he discussed how we can bring objects into gestures – much in the way the ipad is touch screen rather than using an interface like a mouse. He took this a stage further suggesting gestures are also memes. We all know what thumbs up means, a salute or handshake. In this way we can make technology more intuitive and allow is to interact with the physical world by overlaying some 6th sense devices to help us retain information or interpret the real world.

Matt Edgars talk was well prepared and presented, linking the historic industrial past with the now. He did this without really referring to the digital industries of Leeds, or his own part in creating innovative avatar and social media products at Orange.

His first champion was Louis and Lizzy Le Prince who used the ‘new media’ of chemistry to create the first films, linking technology from photography and ticket dispensing to create something revolutionary. He discussed how the standardisation of pins lead to an open source platform where textile factories could construct looms with the knowledge of knowing they could get the right pins supplied.

He discussed the innovation of the steam engine in Leeds, created by the abundance of the right raw materials and the way Leeds used the inspiration of others to build the corn exchange, the Temple Works and the Florentine tower.

He suggested these were good tales to inspire Leeds but that there were other claims on the individuals. The power of the good story is to show how innovation occurs and suggested Leeds needs to be inspired and aspire to the greatness of these people in the past to develop the new technological future.

He mentioned Charles Leadbetter’s six Cs which further illustrate the point:
• Combination
• Conversation
• Challenge
• Commitment
• Connection
• Co-evolution

The final speaker was Rahid Parmar from IBM. I took very little in the way of notes during his presentation on smarter cities but I did make plenty of notes on my thoughts.

My notes consist mainly on the fact that there are over a billion transistors per
human on the planet, a figure 10 times the number of grains of rice. I also noted that technology isn’t about making better machines, but about people. We make better vacuum cleaners to give us more leisure time and less dust irritation, not just because we can.

He also made a point about the vastness of technology and technological change, noting that grandparents at a family birthday didn’t understand how teenagers talked using social media on their phones. Now, I’d argue you could say that of many ages and this isn’t unique to the present day.

Another tale told of how a bad plane flight by his son lead to two plane companies following him on twitter and the power that social interaction has for both consumers and companies if used well.

I noted on the time that the law has to catch up with technology sometimes and misinterpretation comes, just like the Paul Chambers Twitter Joke Trial. I had no idea this point would be magnified just a day later by the appeal court ruling.

Rahid also kept banging on about apples. He made a point that the average apple in the UK has travelled 3,700 miles and this wasn’t right. I have some sympathy of the view. I remember a news story about how UK fish was sold to French wholesalers before being sold back a day later to the UK, an odd and needless shipping of goods purely for financial gain of a few.

But there was no justification or understanding of the apples he was passionate about. Is it more economical to grow in bulk in New Zealand, the US or South Africa and transport than to grow them closer to home? Is it because we value choice and certain varieties can’t be produced in the UK?

Equally it is a simple statement which would involve huge amounts of cultural and economic change to bring about. The UK apple industry is a fraction of what it was and the cheap imports have led to a terminal decline in the number of orchards in this country. Even in places like Herefordshire, there are moribund orchards which would need decades of support to resurrect.

This isn’t to say we don’t invest in apple production or favour the British apple – but it sounds more greenwash than a considered statement. There is a difference between the long and the short term gain. Many of the government cuts offer short term gain, with the promise of long term benefits. But some of the more ill-conceived cuts ignore long term growth created by investment in education and innovation ( the cuts made to the Film Council for example).

My other thoughts were around the drivers for change. Rahid suggested it centred on issues (a resource that is unsustainable), investment (changes made in London ahead of the Olympics) and inspiration (finding a better way)

He suggested the future will also see more pressure on basic utilities and we had to look how to do things differently. He added that even in the UK we might come under growing water shortages with a growing population in ever more densely packed cities. The focus should not be about providing better transport or education, but on seeing what individuals need and trying to empower their own health and happiness. That said, solving the problems with the Kirkstall road would make my life healthier (less stress) and happier.

TEDx and the City (Leeds) Part 1

Emotional memory and the empowerment of individuals through open data sources seemed to be the theme of the third TEDx conference in Leeds, held in The Mint in Holbeck.
The following is a mixture of my notes and thoughts following the event.

Megan Smith, a visual artist originally from Canada, opened TEDxLeeds with an emotive and personal journey from Ottawa to Armley.

It started with a map of where she grew up, with a singular arterial road. Points of reference were drawn based on memories and people. This in itself was visually interesting as a piece of art, but it wasn’t the aim of the image.

Her journey continued there the discovery of Canada and her disillusionment caused by a heavy handed response to a peaceful demonstration she was observing and the subsequent government denials of the event.

Her journey then takes us to Leeds where she felt the need to discover her new surroundings. The more densely packed urban environment means that she felt it would be harder to understand the area in the same way.

Using blogs, mobile technology, social mapping and GPS in 2005, she embarked on a project to collect suggestions of things to do, see and events to experience in Leeds. The project not only helped her to discover Leeds but also enabled other people to discover the more secret side of Leeds that some locals might not even know.

This emotional mapping offers something more than geography, enabling people to come together to share experiences.

She left us with a lesson from Peruvian Economics. You can’t change the world – but you can have an impact on how people experience it.

The second presentation by Julian Tait dovetailed neatly, further exploring emotional mapping. Using the sat nav as an example, he suggested that it guides us through the landscape without reference to names, places, historical places of interest, experiences, memories and much more.

He started, though with a history lesson contrasting two ideas of the state – in the United Kingdom the nation state based on the ‘vulgar’ English as a common language and the empowerment through knowledge and learning. The other situation was the Italian city states which had free trade and exchange of ideas that gave rise to the renaissance.

The use of emotion mapping (following people round cities with monitors to gauge emotional response) can show how people feel about it. Responses to leisure and environment are not the whole story as we spend time in work or doing tasks that aren’t enjoyable. By seeing how good and bad experience map themselves, we can start to see how we can improve the cityscape.

The opening up of data means that other forms of maps can be created and shared. A UK company can now make maps of trees in San Francisco without ever having been there. Centres of data are being created in an echo of the renaissance. In the Britain the renaissance came later due to the difference in language.

The problem is that the American, Canadian, European standards of data capture and use are different using different systems and a common language is needed to empower the masses.

Susan Williamson breathed a strong breathe of fresh air into the world of retail marketing analytics and understanding trends.

Her approach is different from the majority in this area. Instead of looking for broad statistics looking for shallow trends, she advocates looking very narrowly at a few people to get a deeper and richer understanding.

Rather than a tick box approach to finding out what people like, it’s about finding out what individuals really do and why they behave in that way. It is an approach I used when in radio. Rather than look at the ABC figures, think of a particular listener and talk directly to them.

Retail is about finding the right mix of products for a particular space and this doesn’t have to stop in the real world. Space can also be virtual. It might be easier to find the pub regular who has seen the establishment over 40 years than a user of a website set up three years ago but it is possible.

An idea needs to be visualised and brought into the reality of the shopper or user.

A case study on Rolex saw the company look to capitalise on the Bond brand. The Rolex comes well down the list of essential Bond items so a good idea misses its target. The way to capitalise is to look further up that list and use the Bond brand that purchasers might think was pure Bond – like gadgets.

Rather than thinking about aisles and psychological theory, you to understand what goes on in a buyer’s mind and give them what they want rather than what you want to sell. It sounds simple but is far from simple.

Another case study showed how a council wanted to develop a cultural centre. They proposed building a new facility and targeted certain groups they felt would benefit. Actually talking to people meant they realised there was no need for any buildings. Assumptions about venues, accessibility and the knowledge locals had were far from the mark as were assumptions about what they wanted.

A cultural quarter turned in to something that more resembled a cockroach and the emphasis on whom the events were for changes too. And not one new building was created as the venues already existed.

The final session in the first half saw Usman Haque talk about Pachube and how his business has been created out of a need to create inter-connectivity. But Usman was clear the ‘smart’ technology was nothing without the intelligence of the user. To have a smartphone doesn’t make you smart but using a smartphone might enable use to use its feature to your advantage if you understand the technology.

On one level Usman was unsure of what Pachube (pronounced Patch Bay)actually offers but on another level he knew it was about making sensors and devices easily accessible, often using six sense technology.

Six sense technology enables users to view a virtual world laid on top of the real world on devices like iPads or phones. Point the device at a temperature sensor and you can read the temperature not only now, but over the last day, week or month.
By making the data sources connect with easy to read dashboards, you can help various data streams come together to make a new improved service. I personally thought of two services that did this – Traffic-i which uses the data from the highways agency to offer real time traffic services and the Weather Pixie, a great site using weather station data and mashing them into avatar weather pixies who tell you the weather conditions.

But he advocated going one step further, may be offering a logistics firm details about traffic and weather to better predict their delivery schedules.
People also want to do different things with data and the tools have to offer different services:

• Visualisation – showing what the data means
• Controlling – enable users to vary a sensor or device depending on the results
• Mapping/tracking
• Pipes/ mashing – bringing two sets of data together to form a new stream
• Output tools and alerts
• Feeds and search functions
• Mobile applications
• Augmented reality
• The ability to query data

There is also an element of democratising data that is often lost. Creating such links shows how other people can use your data in new ways to produce new services which may help you – or just help others. For example, seeing how much energy a company uses might lead to people being able to suggest how you can lower your energy costs and save money. Relationships can be created between diverse groups can take place creating horizontal integration.

Co-operation and democratisation isn’t straight forward. I agree with the principle but in reality it can be used by pressure groups to sling mud rather than help, but at the same time my view is it’s worth the risks. It is the same argument with opening communications channels and the fear and risks are often never realised whilst the benefits are greater than first thought.