Broadband and Me

Am I sociable?

So my wife turns around to me yesterday and says, "You are sociable! You just pretend not to be!" The startling thing about this revelation is that I guess she is correct - I want to be sociable. There is a 'but' though, in that when I get into a sociable location I often find the 'shy' gene controlling my behaviour. This is a big hurdle when it comes to doing the networking thing in person. For some reason my abilty to hold conversations with people I haven't met before fails. Perhaps a better way of viewing it is that this skill (?) becomes frozen and takes long while to thaw out. Blogging has helped in a networking respect because it allows me to make new friends by engaging in conversations prior to meeting them in person.

By a very subtle (if you can spot it let me know) connection, I managed to finish reading Jory Des Jardin's chapter in MooreSpace on Authenticity. Beautifully written and for some reason I wanted to give her a hug too, which you will understand if you read the chapter.

I liked this:

I didn’t suddenly decide one day to be authentic. I had simply given up my need to be “on,” to sell myself. If I went to my computer feeling gross, then goshdarnit, I’d let the scant few who happened to bump into my blog know it. Instead of trying to produce content, I simply translated the thoughts, the impulses that were already there. Initially this was a painful process; I would question myself, “Did I actually have that thought, or was that thought thunk in an attempt to be authentic?” But the more I wrote, the less I cared. The Web suddenly became a transparent medium through which the contents in my brain—the chatter, the anxieties, and, lo and behold, the opinions were transmitted, intact. It was around this time that I generated readers, not just traffic.

Tell it like it is, don't pretend, don't lie - just explain. Wish I could more, maybe that's the connection with being sociable?

BTW Johnnie likes this chapter too.

Posted by Paul Goodison at 03:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Technorati Tags: MoreSpace Jory+des+jardin johnnie moore authenticity

Power

I found this quote in this article:BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Ken Wiwa: 'Committed to remembering' about Ken Wiwa, written by his son.

As Milan Kundera wrote, 'The struggle of humanity against power, is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Very poignant today for more than the 10th anniversary of Ken Wiwa's death (he was executed by the Nigerian government for protesting against oil companies devasting the Niger delta).

• Blair meets cabinet after defeat
• Al-Qaeda claims Jordan attacks
• Bomb attack on Baghdad restaurant

More Space

Johnnie Moore's Weblog: More Space

You may be wondering if I have in fact bought More Space? well, of course I have! Even though I have already read a pre-release version of Johnnie's chapter. So far I have really been enjoying the book, despite not having gotten very far. One point which stood out for me so far from Rob May's chapter:

Work affects us. That is why business matters. Negative work experiences lead to negative attitudes.

Rob's argument about attitude to work is extremely important to me and why I want to define a place (a market) where I can add most value. A place to give me More Space :)

Looking forward to reading some more soon and getting round to comment on further chapters.

What market am I in?

I have been essentially frustrated of late. Frustrated in the sense of not being able to achieve certain goals I set myself and not being able to articulate in a meaningful way how to move forward. Its led to a blogging paralysis as well where I'm keep trying to second guess myself on what to write.

The reason I mention this is because I think its something that quite often happens in business as well. A company ends up navel gazing far too much and not focusing on what its customers want, or even more fuindamentally who are its markets?

From my own perspective I felt the market wanted a piece of paper to say I can do things. I spent two years getting a formal qualification in marketing. Last week I went and received my award: a Professional Post-graduate Diploma in Marketing from the CIM. Quite a grand occasion at the Symphony hall in Birmingham, with some surprisingly passionate speeches by Professor Maclolm Macdonald and Lord Heseltine. The passion being in a rallying cry to graduands to continue to develop marketing as a profession and evangelise marketing to others as something more than promotion and advertising.

Has it allowed me to move forward? Well its allowed me to look at business in a quite different light. It allows me to use the 'correct' words in describing concepts such as segmentation, situational analysis, and utilse acronyms like AIDA and SVA and actually know what they mean.

So from having some experience in doing, to having a formal bit of paper, therefore the market should love me? Yes? No.

I'm making the same kind of mistakes that companies do too. I'm not talking to cmpanies and finding out what they want, I'm not engaging with the market. I'm also not differentiating myself from others in a positive way.

The key reason for this maybe like a lot of firms as I mentioned above is that I haven't clearly established in my own mind what is my target market and how to make that market aware of my existence.

So why am I telling you this? Well primarily I'm telling myself. I can't hide from this, and I need to provke myself to move forward. And it gives me an excuse to write in a more targetted way. Perhaps even engage some people in conversation.