Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, told the Better World conference at the end of April that the main barrier to technical change is cultural inertia: Don’t gauge the rate at which you will be an instant success by how quickly you can develop the technology,” he told would-be entrepreneurs. “I would gauge how long it takes the collective culture–any… Read more →
A couple of weeks ago I surmised that the travel disruption caused by the eruption of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull might force businesses to rethink how they manage their long-distance relationships. It might, I posited, force businesses to be more open to teleworking, teleconferencing and the use of social media for geographically dispersed teams. Eyjafjallajökull is showing no signs of stopping…. Read more →
Via Anthony Mayfield, I discovered this video from KS12: Anthony pulls two ideas out of the video: How our need to assign and take the credit for ideas can mess things up; and how sometimes information should just fade from view as it gets older, rather than being always perfectly preserved. I pulled out another: That releasing software in beta… Read more →
Derek Sivers reminds us that on the other end of our keyboard there lies a real person, someone who has real feelings, who will have real reactions to what we say. When we yell at our car or coffee machine, it’s fine because they’re just mechanical appliances. So when we yell at a website or company, using our computer or… Read more →
A good (but too brief!) post by Mahendra about the importance of relevance. Mahendra is spot on to say that relevance is more important than big numbers and way more important than real-time. This is true not just in public-facing social media applications – it’s not just Facebook that wins because it’s relevant – but in Enterprise 2.0 too. Slapping… Read more →
Mitch Anthony links to a post form PsyBlog about how groups redefine ‘creativity’ as ‘behaviour that conforms to group norms’: When groups are asked to think creatively the reason they frequently fail is because implicit norms constrain them in the most explicit ways. This is clearly demonstrated in a recent study carried out by Adarves-Yorno et al. (2006). They asked… Read more →
For years I’ve been talking about the Blogger Lifecycle – the way in which business bloggers react to the act of business blogging. Last week this topic featured in a workshop I was running so I finally drew the graph that has been in my head for the last several years. Based loosely on the Gartner Hype Cycle, it tracks… Read more →
I have laryngitis. Whilst yesterday I sounded a bit like Ferdy (Ricky Gervais) in Stardust after his voice has been turned into that of a seagull, but today I have nary a squeak. Yet because the vast majority of my daily interactions are via social tools such as Twitter, IM, wikis and blogs, most people won’t even realise that I… Read more →
Quite a while ago I stumbled on this blog post, I am not a social media guru, by Jon Swanson. I think I know what Jon is trying to say, that it’s a mistake to focus on social tools rather than the goals you want to use social tools to achieve. But I think there’s a thread of misunderstanding rippling… Read more →
Robert Biswas-Diener, who studies the psychology of happiness, writes on CNN.com about the difference between people who procrastinate and those who incubate: Procrastinators may have a habit of putting off important work. They may not ever get to projects or leave projects half finished. Importantly, when they do complete projects, the quality might be mediocre as a result of their… Read more →
Suw is one of the UK’s social media pioneers. With over a decade of social media experience, Suw has helped clients worldwide use social tools for collaboration and communication internally and to build customer relationships externally. She has a comprehensive understanding of strategy, implementation and social functionality design (building social interaction into the heart of a website or application).
She writes regularly for Forbes.com on publishing, self-publishing, crowdfunding and alternative business models for authors.
Suw is herself a self-published author. Her first novella, Argleton, was described as "an absorbing and satisfying story" and comes "highly recommended, especially if you like maps or are a computer geek". She is currently finishing up her second novella which will be out early summer 2013.
Chocolate and Vodka is her personal blog where she writes about writing and any $random_subjects that catch her eye. And yes, she's married to Kevin.
Kevin Anderson is the editor of the Media Development Investment Fund's Knowledge Bridge site and newsletter. The Media Development Loan Fund invests in independent news organisations in emerging democracies, and the Knowledge Bridge project is designed to help these news organisations make the digital transition.
Kevin brings almost 20 years of journalism experience to his work. Since 1996, he has been focused on digital journalism, working for a wide range of news organisations. He brings a depth of experience in reporting, editing and digital development to his work. In 1998, he joined the BBC and became their first online journalist based outside of the UK, covering the US for its award winning news website. After coming to the UK in 2005, he developed a blogging strategy for BBC news, helped launch a programme on the BBC's 5Live covering weblogs and podcasts and was on the team that launched the interactive radio programme World Have Your Say on the BBC World Service.
From 2006 to 2010, he worked at The Guardian as its first blogs editor and then as its digital research editor. As digital research editor, he was responsible for monitoring key developments in digital media and evaluating their value to Guardian journalists and our audiences. From 2010 until he joined MDLF in 2012, he worked as a freelance journalist and with Suw as a digital media consultant and digital journalism training working with news organisations including Al Jazeera, Reed Business Information, Czech TV and CNN.
