It’s been a long time since I posted here. I’m using an app on my Android phone. It’s cool.
I’m working at Everything Everywhere, specifically focused on selling Broadband online. Funny world.
Archive for the 'Business' Category
Well I’ve been working for a start-up companmy caled AV3 Plugins LTd now trading as AV3 Software. Its been a very interesting ride for 5 months - getting a site built, specify the details of how its going to work, getting all the administration done and writing processes. Now comes the hard work, the marketing!
We’re selling plug-ins for the creative markets, which includes Adobe After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro, Avid, Autodesk and others. As well as software itself for video and 3D work.
What some of this stuff can do is mind boggling. No wonder special effects almost look real these days!
Launching our affiliate programme too, mustn’t forget that, and defintely looking for people to give us feeddback on the site (positive as well 
). I must say - I am enjoying getting this done and applying a number of principles I have wanted to for a while.
Have to thank the owners and directors for having the vision to let us work in a virtual way. AS Stuart skyped me yesterday, “Web 3.0 software company”!
I’m going to try blogging a bit more often now. See what happens…
I attended a very different kind of event on Friday night in the South-East Economic Forum run by Hart Brown and SEEDA (South East Economic Development Agency). The main topic was prospering in the current climate and provided some insights into just that but not perhaps as much as I had hoped.
Three main speakers - HSBC’s Chief UK Economist, Vice Chair of SEEDA and Communications Director of Philips.
Prospects for the UK economy - mixed some showers here, sunny spells there but on a sectoral rather than regional basis
Prospects for the South East - good-ish - need to improve basic and technician level education, more open to global environment than othe UK regions because of large service (read financial) sector.
Philips - nearly died in late 80’s but pulled it around becuase someone actually went back to basics and applied marketing 101 - ask what your customers want, focus on your core competence, don’t do things that lose you money, have a coherent brand.
I didn’t pull as much information as I could have done becuase it was all very formal, all very serious and wearing a suit (yes, you read that correctly) in a lecture hall with no air conditioning, I am surprised I didn’t pass out. Enough of the criticism though.
The three speakers were very engaging speakers in different ways and offered very different views on potentially the same topic. What it failed on though was actually being a forum. It ended up being a discussion from the great and good with little questioning.
A number of people there seemed to want a little more on how things are going to pan out in the next couple of years for small and medium sized businesses (myself included) but whilst getting interesting insight on the UK economy (or maybe it was crystal gazing by a fortune teller - with no offence intended to economists) and into how the south east does have poorly developed areas (there along the coast - Berkshire, Surrey and NE Hampshire need not apply) and lastly how Philips receovered from not being focused on the market (not sure how it appplies to the specifics of the current market other than you need to focus on your market). I came away feeling a little short changed - which is a shame because I thought it had a lot of potential.
I did manage to do some market research of my own with a few people before and after the speakers, but not enough. More work to do to convince organisers to change style and shift expectations.
BBC NEWS | Business | Lessons from Silicon Valley
Peter Day offers another excellent column on business and the future (or now if you know about this stuff already).
Quite interesting to note the fundamanetal flaw in Excite mentioned here:
Lesson two says: the internet is a new sort of market place that needs new business plans to make it work.
…But Excite took the conventional view that the ads would come from the top 100 companies in the USA, the people who buy huge amount of TV time and blanket the newspapers and the magazines.Google did not go for the big spenders. Google’s squads of PhDs wrote algorithms that would make it viable for the company to take hundreds of thousands of ads from hundreds of thousands of small (or big) companies, and pop the ads up in highly relevant spaces close to the search lists.
So lesson number two is about the new markets created by the internet, the ones making big profits for Google quarter by quarter.
“The 20th Century mass production world was about dozens of markets of millions of people. The 21st Century is all about millions of markets of dozens of people,” observes Mr Kraus.
Classic stuff about Long Tail (as Peter mentions) but no real point about co-creation and community. Amazon and Google both inspire community involvement in terms of development (both allow people to interact with the service via APIs to work with the software and develop new applications) and participation Amazon with reviews and its shops programme and Google with its ad services.
Its a shame that that aspect is missing from Peter’s review as I think ultimately millions of markets is going to be about co-creation as the markets are far more demanding and creative than businesses can be on their own… thoughts anyone?
When it comes to business, which philosophy do you subscribe to?
1. I believe my business could ultimately be destroyed by factors beyond my control, such as inflexible unions, shifting demographics, competitive monopolies, governmental regulation or acts of god.
2. I believe my business is in complete and utter control of its destiny, regardless of outside factors.
If you picked answer one, then you probably hold stock in determinism, which basically posits that every event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of outside influences independent of human will.
If you picked answer two, you picked the more difficult choice but ulitmately, I believe, the right choice: free will.
Quick aside: Philosophy is obviously the term of the day although having studied a fair bit of social science, I think i would be inclined to call it social theory.
Back on track: I agree that the answer two is how I perceive the world, although what I think perhaps is missing is the understanding that it is not as simple as that. The world is a complex place with so many interdependent variables that it is almost impossible to say that you are ‘in complete and utter control‘. Control being the word I object to. You are responsible for your own actions, despite being heavily influenced by lots of macro and micro environmental factors (not to mention those nasty little voices inside your head [why can't they be nasty little newspapers?]). Control though is a fallacy.
The quote from Fortune makes this point. And noting from the Start the week email from Ecsw.com
Ask any Southwest employee what the price of aviation fuel is at the moment and they’ll tell you. They’ll also know the implications for the company’s profits if that fuel price goes up or downby a given amount
Southwest makes everyone in the company responsible - they know the score - they cannot control the price of fuel, they can take appropriate action.
I would really like to work with a company that gives you that type of responsiblity (but remember NOT control, never control, control is impossible, must read more complexity theory books)
BBC NEWS | Business | MPs to quiz UK credit card firms
I merely ask the question? I have been told that by a financial advisor, my father and a colleague at various times. MPs also seem to have a similar view (well maybe not evil but you get the idea).
Do we really need to live beyond our means? Probably not. We certainly consume more than we need to because society puts pressure on us to want so much. Keeping up with the Jones’s is more about how well you can manage your debt than whether you actually need something.
Wear tatty green jumpers and sod the Jones’s they’re rubbish anyway. Give money to Oxfam for Xmas and buy the new Band Aid single or the Live Aid DVD(but not on credit).
Johnnie Moore’s Weblog: Governance: not by the numbers
Haven’t blogged Johnnie for a while:
I think there’s a desire to reduce our complex, mysterious human behaviour to a set of mechanical formulae as a way to feel safe in an uncertain world. Nothing wrong with wanting to feel safe - but I fear that such an approach is often counter-productive, encouraging us to trust experts instead of paying attention to the subtle evidence of our senses.
Couldn’t agree more about governance. It seems far more to do with the numbers and the formulae than actually getting up to present a case. Perhaps its American fascination with numbers and mathematics compared to the British and European tendancy to words and argument (in its purest sense).
Although perhaps this is ’self-proclaimed’ experts rather than people with real understanding?
Seth’s Blog: The Curse of Great Expectations
…benchmarking against the universe actually encourages us to be mediocre, to be average, to just do what everyone else is doing. The folks who invented the Mini (or the Hummer, for that matter) didn’t benchmark their way to the edges. Comparing themselves to other cars would never have created these fashionable exceptions. What really works is not having everything being up to spec… what works is everything being good enough, and one or two elements of a product or service being AMAZING.
My ex-colleague Stuart had a great antipathy towards benchmarking and like Seth Godin noted that you can only get slightly better at what the others you benchmark against are doing. You are not being different, amazing, defining a unique selling point (to use the jargon).
I agree with the sentiment. Somethings you do need to be good at (good enough as Seth says) and perhaps you will want to benchmark these or at least give yourself ways to see whether what you are doing is working well enough.Other things you have to try and innovate and be creative. I don’t think you can measure creativity or benchmark it. I could create 200 new things this week but none would be amazing. Next week I could do 6 and 3 would be stunning (obviously not in reality).
ntl look to improve, and have looked to improve over a long period. Sometimes they manage it - like now improvements are happening (I dare say not fast enough for some customers) however benchmarking data is a relatively recent phenomenon here. Bizarre? Yes, well ‘no comment’.
I suppose where I am trying to get to is that we do have elements of the amazing product, and perhaps we are good enough at some things (but by no means all) however we lack the culture to really be amazing and to make our customers happy most of the time. I think that truely comes from leadership and having never worked anywhere that has it I can’t comment further - its just a feeling I have.
Seth suggests you need ‘guts’ but I also think you need passion rather than obsession which is the difference between being top of the benchmark or being remarkable. If you have the passion you’ll find a way.
BBC NEWS | Business | Telewest signs debt-swap deal
The spectre of more consolidation rears its head! While I think that having stable competition in all three (?) product markets the cable companies work in is good, I am still not sure of the validity of merging ntl and Telewest or even whether that truely is on the agenda. The discussion as to whether this will happen has been going on for years (ever since I started working for CabelTel - the original cable company that became ntl) but would it be good for customers, consumers in general, employees or the business remains to be seen. Certainly there is a warming because of the situation of the two companies and the overt presence of Shareholder(s), the Huffs. At an operational and marketing level though ntl are two very different beasts, despite their fairly mutual technology and product set.
Its something to keep an eye on.
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