So my flatmate ended up in a swimming pool with his iPhone. To my astonishment leaving the thing in a jar of rice – as advised by many online – actually did the trick. The rice absorbs the water, and this process can be further aided by the use of a warm airing cupboard, bagged silica gel and compressed air sprays of the like used to clean keyboards. Just take care not to charge the phone up or turn it on until you’re pretty sure it’s dried out.
So, just an entry to polish off the other areas I mentioned at the beginning of the ‘aims’ post: how do I intend to communicate on this platform, and what am I looking to achieve by doing so? I don’t envisage my ‘actual’ posts reading like these – they are meant more as a bit of additional context for readers to know where I’m coming from, and as such I’ll copy them across to an ‘about the blog’ section where they probably belong.
1) How do I want to communicate?
I’ve been reading blogs for several years now, initially in a haphazard way, but increasingly on the grounds that the best of them have much more practical, witty and/or incisive comment than that available in ‘old media’. Over time I’ve managed to pin down some of the respects in which these stand out over the countless millions of generics out there:
Keep things authentic
This is the golden rule of social media. The majority of corporate blogs come across as hopelessly naff for this reason; unless they’re actually communicating something helpful about their services, products or direction, more often than not they simply seem like jumping on the bandwagon for the sake of it (which, of course, is precisely what they are doing). Who wants to read something if they think the writer’s trying to game them? That could be trying to push a product, or simply a matter of a ghostwriter behind a celebrity.
Add value
Information consumes time, and time is obviously limited, therefore media is a form of transaction. The audience gives you their time, and will only do so (at least on a recurring basis) if they are getting something back out of the deal. In a concrete sense what does this mean? Providing original insight, material of some concrete utility, or simply good entertainment.
Take care with your voice
I learned this rule the hard way, and this is a problem for a huge number of novice writers out there – one they’re not even aware of. Imagine reading an article then fast forwarding 6 months. What do you remember about that article? If you’re typical you’ll retrieve very little of the actual content – perhaps a headline view, if that. Instead, most people remember how they reacted emotionally to the writer and their narrative voice; were they catty, condescending, amusing, dry or silly? I’m not going to pretend I know exactly how my ‘voice’ will develop, but there are certain principles I want to follow. I want to be clear and direct. I don’t want to attack people. This is not a karmic debt issue – I am happy to criticise ideas. It’s just that snarky is not cool. Only a few writers pull it off stylishly (in the UK AA Gill has particular presence, although my personal favourite is Lynn Barber) – the rest tend to come off poorly, more often than not seeming bitter and insecure. This is an approach I’ll carry on to comment moderation too. Thoughtfully attacking stances, actions or decisions is fine, but a peculiar quality of the internet is that a personal attack or two amongst individuals will inevitably spiral into low-grade warfare.
Maintain clarity
Vital but often overlooked. It’s no surprise that many of the world’s most successful academics (at least as far as the arts and social sciences are concerned) are those who communicate clearly, and can use this talent to broadcast their field’s finding far beyond the confines of academia. Malcolm Gladwell has pretty much made a career out of translating social science! I am a fervent believer in the principle that the author should not make his or her readers work unnecessarily.
Evergreen content is content that is ‘timeless’ – and favoured by book publishers the world over. Providing news-style material demands a frequency and regularity of posting that is intensive and time consuming, and as a strategy suffers from posts that are rapidly rendered irrelevant. Visitors derive their value as much from the freshness of the content as anything else. Conversely, evergreen content remains relevant for much longer. As things stand I am not positioned to provide content fresher than that found on the likes of TechCrunch or the general news sites. So aside from elaborating on why I’m excited by innovations that catch my eye, I’ll keep focused on trying to tease out some of the underlying dynamics – the pursuit of which keeps me curious about the world.
2) What am I looking to achieve?
Blogs are a rather special platform – on the one hand they can serve as modern day soapboxes with global reach; on another they are a form of online calling card that can offer a taster of a blogger’s thinking style, accessible to potential business partners, customers or employers. In the modern world communication has to be *so* tailored to the task at hand that there is no room to demonstrate any subtlety or nuance, and blogs can provide a great outlet for this. Savvy bloggers with established audiences have worked out other applications too, such as using blogs as a form of research tool to bounce ideas around and canvass opinions en masse. Finally, they have the added bonus of serving as a form of diary; a record of little thoughts and perspectives that might otherwise slip by. I intend to explore each of the above avenues, but ultimately this is still a field in flux and I’ve little doubt other uses will pop up over time.
Resources
Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph M Williams – a classic text on written style, emphasising the ‘ethos’ of the narrative voice and writing clearly and directly. Next step is some brevity.
Having just failed to publish with the WordPress app I thought I’d try one more time. Photo is of London Eye ~5am earlier this summer.
It felt like going through some sort of mental pregnancy, but after some months of ruminating, I think I’ve now got a handle on what I want my blog to cover. I’m a big fan of keeping a keen eye on the goals of any given project from the outset, and pinning down exactly what I want from this one has been a bit of a slippery affair. In the end, I broke the task down into three different ‘dimensions’: what types of content I want to address; how I want to address it; and what I want to achieve by doing so. In this post I’ll deal with the content, and in the next my approach and aims.
1) Content
Quiz almost anyone at the height of their game about the ingredients of their success, and pretty high up that list will come “passion”. Now it’s obvious that most successful people also have little worms gnawing away inside pushing them neurotically toward greater and greater things, but actually the same worms seem to snack quite widely on the endless acres of hacks out there suggesting neuroses are not enough. Passion seems genuinely key – a counterbalance to the unstoppable streams of setbacks and dogwork demanded of anyone trying to actually make stuff happen.
Admittedly blogs aren’t actually all that difficult to make happen, but I think the point applies in other ways too – when people speak with passion, their eyes sparkle and something a little bit special crackles. Unspeakably dull content becomes fascinating, and audiences come away feeling energised rather than drained. So with this in the back of my mind, my natural interests are the obvious vein to tap:
a) Life
Pretty much anyone with a pulse has an interest in this. And at the end of the day, I belong to that particular subset of humanity who decided to take up a degree in anthropology. Aside from a liberal smattering of lost souls and those simply looking to get government funding to satisfy their ethnic predilections, most anthropologists are drawn to the discipline by some sort of underlying fascination with the human condition, and I’m no exception. I’ll share some of my more philosophical reflections on here, unless enough people tell me to shut up.
b) Technology, Trends and Crystal Ball Gazing
The rate of technological change today is astronomical, and unleashing seismic forces at an unprecedented rate. Centuries ago the printing press changed the world by enabling the rapid dissemination of ideas; today the internet has pushed this to another level. Engineers working on how to shovel larger and larger amounts of data from one place to another have inadvertently sounded the death knell for the television industry, and search engines have ripped the heart out of the newspapers, taking eyeballs on the one side and advertisers on the other.
All the while a new breed of raw capitalism emerges in the East, cherry picking the best of the West whilst remaining unchecked by Enlightment values. Simultaneously social networking technologies are ripping through attempts to control information flows – Twitter in Iran being the most noted to date – and the propagandists of the past will have to engage in meme warfare as quarantine ceases to be a viable strategy.
Whether you are a geek who gets juiced up by the silliest Silicon Valley startup, or one of the estimated third of Europeans who have never used the internet, technological innovation is increasingly relevant and as millions of livelihoods get swept away, the savvy will have a head start chasing the opportunities left in their wake. Expect a steady stream of updates about funky innovations, and the occasional more in-depth post on where the ball might bounce next.
c) Business and Venture Capital
I am unrepetently passionate about business, an interest that naturally dovetails with technology, the two areas acting as a form of ‘dynamo’: each driving the other and in the process carving out the huge social changes alluded to above. Venture Capitalists hack away at this particular frontier, helping shape the future in the race to make megabucks – although more often than not squandering vast quantities of other peoples’ money instead. Successful startupeering is certainly more of an art than a science, yet one I find fascinating. I am often working with entrepreneurial projects, and if I personally take that particular path I’ll make sure to furnish any remaining readers with my insights along the way. That said I’ll make sure to refrain from wearing the badge of ‘entrepreneur’ until (if!) I earn it – anyone can enter, but only a few take.
d) Productivity & Efficiency
For the uninitiated, half of the internet appears to be a gigantic project to work out how to lead the most efficient life possible, pumping out tribes of advocates for the various schools of thought. Having read more than my fair share of this material (with variable results), I occasionally have a few cents to throw into the ring and from time to time shall do so.
e) Navigating the Social Media World
Amongst the bazillion blogs out there, a tiny proportion account for the majority of the traffic, and the modern world has seen the rise of the professional blogger as an institution. Sociologically this is refreshing, with content producers essentially elected from below rather than appointed from on high. Yet it is also a craft in itself, with a whole community of extraordinarily bright people deploying a wide arsenal of tactics in getting the word out, ranging from heavily empirical metrics-led approaches, through to carefully cultivated relationships with those in the public eye. I’ll post up the most striking tools and strategies I stumble across.
f) Careers Advice
Although I attribute it more to being the best of a bad bunch, I managed to land a job at a private equity house straight out of university – and a year later surmount a set of strategy consultancy case studies to garner a role at a Bain spinout. That’s the condensed version. It misses out a great number of repetitive stories concerning my repeatedly banging my head against invariably hard and occasionally serrated surfaces. To save future job seekers some of my tribulations, I have written a guide to graduate job hunting, and I will publish strategic tips and extracts that are relevant to job hunters of all ages.
Concluding Thoughts
Although on the face of it these topics appear disparate, as I post more content then common threads should become apparent. Plenty of people passionate about technology wonder about its applications for productivity, and all are interested in how the future is going to unfold. Both topics are of particular interest to the savvy businessperson who will always have an eye for the new opportunities left in the wake of change. And as businesses move into these new spaces, so will consumers.
Ultimately much of the modern story is one of how humans adapt to a level and speed of change the likes of which has never been seen and shall soon be surpassed, so I hope you’ll help me in trying to unravel the little that I can!
DL
So, I’ve finally got my act together enough to get a blog going. The process is fraught with decisions – most of them dry and technical, such as choosing a host or blogging platform – but some of them more personal. For example, does the nascent blogger keep his privacy and an unselfconscious writing style by penning under a pseudonym, or lay down the gauntlet and in the process open the floodgates to Googling employers, green inks and assorted internet loons?
My choice is a pretty clear one, but personally difficult too. I’m lucky in that I’m not that phased by public speaking, but I confess to feeling some trepidation about public writing. A few dumb words at some event quickly slip from the collective memory – not so the internet. Hit a wrong note and it can end up permanently on the public record. Then there is your audience – when you’re stood in front of a crowd, they’re pretty easy to read; in fact, they’re pretty damned hard not to read. But this little WordPress box has a blank face, so it doesn’t leave the blogger with a huge amount of room to change direction. Of course, the same applies to all forms of the written word, but as of today Google doesn’t quite hoover up ever character ever typed.
So pitching the narrative voice is a hard one – and one I assume will involve some iteration. Pitch it too high and it’s all too easy to come across as condescending and superior; too low and it’s patronising. So forgive me if I get it wrong – and do let me know about it, although I think I’m going to put my hands up now and say I’ll be moderating the blog, so be nice – only witty bitchiness will be allowed! In any event, I’d be disappointed if my friends didn’t slate me for being a flagrant narcissist for doing this – they’d probably not be my friends if they didn’t. But I am setting this blog up for a purpose other than public ego massage, and I shall go into details of that in the next post.