If you can get past the slightly rambling intro, this conversation between Jonathan Fields and Tony Schwartz is a fascinating look at what’s wrong with the way we currently tend to work. It really starts to get interesting about 8 minutes in. Although very focused on American business and culture, pretty much everything they say relates to British and European… Read more →
How much enterprise software is truly fun to use? Aarron Walter discusses the importance of fun in his article Emotional Interface Design: The Gateway to Passionate Users. It’s a very interesting read with some enlightening examples. But to take the ball and run with it a bit, I think ‘fun’ is one reason that people who use social media can… 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 →
Brendan Koerner writes over at Wired about How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive. He says: Last year, Nucleus Research warned that Facebook shaves 1.5 percent off total office productivity; a Morse survey estimated that on-the-job social networking costs British companies $2.2 billion a year. But for knowledge workers charged with transforming ideas into products — whether gadgets, code,… 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 →
Psychology Today has an article by Amy Fries on how daydreamers are also more intelligent: Researchers using brain scanning technology found that the “default network,” the relatively new buzzword for the daydreaming state, was significantly more active in the “superior intelligence group” than the “average intelligence group.” According to the study, this suggests that the stronger connections displayed in the… Read more →
I’ve been thinking this morning about why people who are interested in social media are often interested in productivity as well. Adam created a productivity category here on The Social Enterprise long before I turned up and many of my other blogger friends regularly write about productivity. Stephanie Booth writes some especially good stuff on productivity, often mirroring my own… Read more →
There are lots of reasons why letting people blog behind (or in front of) the firewall is a good idea, but one of the key benefits to blogging is how easy it makes thoughtfulness and creativity. In his blog post Stress, creativity and confabulation, Johnnie Moore shares some of the insights he’s gleaned from Keith Sawyer’s book, Group Genius: Keith’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.
