Still learning

I continue to guest for Shane Richmond at the Telegraph, looking at the themes of customer economics, differentiation and predictability. I’m still getting used to being somewhere else, using different formats for different communities. Please do let me know what you think.

Of bridges and walls

Just had a delightful dinner at Drones with old colleagues, hosted by Sean. (Thanks, Sean). Sometime over dinner, Stu mentioned what the president of CBS “interactive”, Quincy Smith,  had said a few days ago; I’d seen the story but not the quote.

It’s worth repeating.

Television network CBS has seen increases in two of its late night shows, which they attribute to clips uploaded to YouTube. The late night talk shows have seen a 5% and 7% increase of viewers since CBS began posting clips on YouTube.

When asked about the partnership Quincy Smith, new president at CBS Interactive said, “We believe this inflection point is the precursor to many exciting developments as we continue to build bridges rather than construct walls.”

Attaboy, Quincy. Let’s all continue to build bridges rather than construct walls. You can read the rest of the story here.
After hearing similar stories from publishers who let their books be Looked Inside by Amazon or  Book Scanned by Google, the retarded hippie in me starts singing Seeger. When will they ever learn?

Learning by doing

If you see me post less frequently here over the next ten days, there’s a reason for it. I’m trying out a number of things, and the net effect is that I’m rushed off my feet. This quarter, I hope to:

  • Have changed jobs after a decade (done)
  • Move house after a decade (doing)
  • Pack in the nicotine after three decades (done)
  • Pack in the caffeine after four decades (done)
  • Sleep a little more (doing)

So it’s been quite a quarter already, as I wend my way towards 50. And somewhere in between, I was asked if I felt like guesting at Shane Richmond’s blog at the Telegraph, which I started doing yesterday. In the meantime, I’m still working on kicking off my BT internal blog; still figuring out why I need one (there are good reasons); still working on the ethos of the blog (nearly complete). When I’m done with that, I intend to share what I’ve learnt about internal versus external blogs. Comments welcome.
All this is as new to me as it is to most of you. We all learn as we go along, seeing what works, junking what doesn’t. Thanks for your patience.

Introducing LifeKludger

One of the first people I started reading as a result of ConfusedOfCalcutta is David N Wallace, who actually bothered to comment on something I’d written, one of the first to do so. I followed the trail and was hooked.

I’ve always wanted to do something about equality of access and of opportunity, probably something I was exposed to in Calcutta water. When I came across Dave’s site, I realised just how much I can learn from him, he opened a whole new world for me. And when I found out he was about as far away from me as was physically possible, it showed me something of the magic of the blogosphere.

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So it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to Dave the LifeKludger, who becomes my first NewTailBlog. Thanks for everything, Dave.

NewTailBlog

Following up on my post yesterday, on lesser-known bloggers, I’ve had quite a few comments come my way, some via the blog, some via e-mail, some face-to-face. I liked Cornelius’s suggestion the most:

You could pick one day per week/month/year and review one or more new blogs that you find noteworthy and under-appreciated on that day. Get the bloggers mentioned to write similar posts and have everyone use the same technorati tag; something like “LongTailTuesdays” or a similar catchphrase.

Something about the suggestion made me feel it would have more “legs” than a chain-letter or “list of five” approach, that a tag-based ritual would somehow be more sustainable.

So what I thought we’d do is the following:

Every now and then, choose a blog that, in your opinion, doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Introduce it to your community. Keep the intro short. Tag it NewTailBlog.

How often should you do it? Up to you. No rules.

Which blogs should you pick? Up to you. No rules.

Let the tags do their work. Let the blogosphere do its work.

And see what happens.