Johnnie Moore has a great podcast episode talking with Viv McWaters and Roland Harwood on how an undue focus on metrics can get in the way of real thought and understanding. I see this frequently myself, too, when people want to focus on ‘return on investment’ or ‘success metrics’ for social media at the cost of understanding the intangible results,… 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 don’t think I can put it better than Scott Berkun does in The cult of busy: The person who gets a job done in one hour will seem less busy than the guy who can only do it in five. How busy a person seems is not necessarily indicative of the quality of their results. Someone who is better… Read more →
Scott Berkun has a great post entitled Asshole Driven Development, which expounds upon various software project management styles, including Cognitive Dissonance Development, Cover Your Ass Engineering and my favourite, Development By Denial. The eponymous management style is described as: Asshole Driven development (ADD) – Any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions is asshole driven development. All… 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 →
Roger Martin has an excellent post on Harvard Business Review that looks back at how business executives used to be embedded in the community they served but are now disconnected from it, as are the businesses they work for. It is a must read. In the 60s, business were smaller, executives knew their customers and their staff. Shareholders were in… Read more →
Via Christian Crumlish, I discovered the excellent essay Are we building a better Internet? by Matte Scheinker. Matte’s essay looks at how seemingly small design decisions can have huge impacts on the way that the internet evolves. He says: The first design meme I encountered with true deleterious power was the opt-out check-box for marketing emails on sign-up forms. Our… Read more →
The British Psychological Society’s Research Digest Blog carries a post about how much better we feel when we get absorbed in a social task than if we do the same task on our own. You’ve probably heard of ‘flow’, the feeling of being so absorbed in something that time stands still. Flow “is highly rewarding and usually provokes feelings of… Read more →
Third party social media tools really are a two-edged sword. On the one hand, they allow you to get up and running almost instantaneously for little or no money, but on the other hand you have no data security or guarantee of uptime. I’m reminded of this dichotomy by the recent closure of a number of music blogs by Google’s… 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.
