Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

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I told you so

As someone who has submitted and reviewed CV’s on several occasions over the years, one of the major challenges I’ve encountered is in differentiating the great ones (including mine) from the not so great. Buried in any pile of resumés there is always to be found a few rock stars, many Joe Averages, and a depressing number of muppets. It’s normally pretty easy to filter out the muppets, but it’s often hard to discern the rock stars from the Joe Averages – they tend to have the same or similar academic backgrounds and experience, helped in no small part by the fact that Joe Average tends to do a very convincing job of blagging his accomplishments, while rock stars often (foolishly) rely on the facts speaking for themselves.

Some people try and use design to stand out, but sadly that just makes it look like they’re trying too hard. I mean, sure – you don’t want so hand in a CV written in crayon on toilet paper, but once you get past neat and professional it gets a little embarrassing. If you must send in a hard-copy, use only white, A4 paper with a single staple in the top left-hand corner. Do NOT use binders or plastic folders – if your CV is so long that it needs binding, you’re showing your prospective employer that you can’t hold down a job and/or don’t understand brevity. Either way, they won’t want to know about you.

So how do you make sure you stand out?

One trick that’s worked for me is to include a set of professional insights – half a dozen thoughts about the industry you work in, and what you think the next year or so has in store. You don’t have to make out like you’re some kind of oracle, and it really doesn’t matter if your predictions are a little off. Provided you don’t say anything too stupid, it always makes for good conversation in the interview, which you must have if you’re to have any shot at all of being hired. It also shows the employer that you’re not just some clock-punching automaton making a career out of getting by – show ‘em you really get what you do, and the job is yours for the asking.

Anyhoo, while doing some reading yesterday I was reminded of one of the predictions in my current CV, and – sadly for millions of people – it looks like I was bang on the money.

A substantial ‘adjustment’ will take place in tech stocks this year. That’s right people – we’re headed for another crash. Google will take a big hit, down to $400 US or below.

Exhibit A: Call it a ‘global financial crisis’ if you like, but a crash is still a crash

Exhibit B: Google shares are currently trading at $334, down from a 52-week high of $747.24 and $649.25 at the start of the year (when I made the prediction).

I wish I’d managed to predict myself into a new 911, but it’s been a pretty good year for me so I can’t complain. That said, (obligatory dig at the dyke) there are some rough times ahead and we need a firm hand on the tiller. Party vote NATIONAL on 8 November please!

An Exclusive Interview With Winston Peters

Mike Catty you’re my hero!

Click here for the full interview. Put the coffee down before reading on…

Awesome

I swear I have a post brewing – it’s just that, well, the Friday night poker game was a bit… *jollier* than usual last night and I’m not quite on form today. (My head feels like a Frenchman’s been living in it)

While I’m sorting my shit out, you have to watch this video. I’d heard it had been done and wondered what it would sound like, and wonder no more.

Behold – skinny white guy with an acoustic guitar performs a not-half-bad cover of NWA’s ‘Fuck the Police‘. Awesome*.

*Almost as good as the Sesame Street version.

When copyright goes wrong

Some interesting developments in the area of online copyright infringement this week…

Fans of the cult show Mad Men had been tuning in to in-character tweets from fans posing as Don Draper and colleagues from fictional 60’s ad agency Sterling Cooper. Earlier this week the show’s producers, AMC, issued a DMCA takedown notice requiring Twitter to cancel the user accounts of those concerned, leading to widespread condemnation from fans. AMC has now realised that – get this – having fans is actually a good thing, and have withdrawn their complaint. The Twitter accounts in question have now been restored. Hopefully this will serve as a lesson to copyright holders that sometimes it’s better just to let the fans have their fun rather than jumping in and playing the bad guy.

Case in Point – Hasbro. At the insistence of the shortsighted North American rights-holder’s considerable legal might, Facebook has blocked Scrabulous access for all users (with the possible exception of India?). Fans of the game are not exactly flocking to adopt the official version released by Mattel (the International rights-holder). It appears they have taken zero usability cues from Scrabulous (fear of a copyright infringement lawsuit? LOL), making the game a very poor substitute for what was a pretty addictive gaming experience.

Good news is, fans can still play Scrabulous outside of Facebook via the Scrabulous.com website. And they are. I don’t know about you fine folks, but prior to the axing I’d say 60% of my facebook visits were Scrabulous-driven. Now I’m spending a hell of a lot of time at Scrabulous.com, and hitting Facebook maybe once every couple of days. Ironically (as opposed to Alanically), the only real losers in this one appear to be Hasbro, Mattel and Facebook. The big winners? Their lawyers, of course!*

*Yuh. We all know how smart lawyers are, right?

More Facebook Stalking

A while ago I mentioned a hilarious site I’d found, called HotChickWithDouchebags.com. Today I am proud to announce that I have been officially friended by the Patron Saint Of Douchebags (PSOD), Mr Joey Carrera (a.k.a. “Joey Porsche“).

I have no fucking idea why I find this so funny – it just is, so deal with it.

Next up…

No, seriously – I really did send the PM a friend request today. I can’t wait to see her status updates…

Helen is: Getting ready for a frolic in the bush (on Monday)
Helen is: Really enjoyed her *ahem* girls’ night in (on Tuesday)
Helen is: Heading down to Lake Tekapo (on Wednesday)
Helen is: Going tramping (yesterday)
Helen is: Heading for the hut (21 hours ago)
Helen is: Wishing she’d paid attention in that St.John’s course (5 minutes ago)

Wish me luck!

PS. On browsing Helen Clark’s friend list, is anyone surprised to see that:
(a) her only friends are other politicians;
(b) Parekura Horomia’s profile doesn’t have a picture on it; and
(c) There is no option to “poke Helen”?*

Me neither.

*Cheers Dave – how the hell could I have missed that one? I can only assume that feature is restricted to those with ‘inner beauty’. I.e. When she’s in ‘er – beauty!

Where do people find the time?

Nobody who works in television has the right to ask that question.

– Clay Shirky

I’ve mentioned before that one of the common responses I get when encouraging people to give blogging a try is that they don’t feel they have anything worth writing about. Although I honestly believe that, no matter how mundane our lives and musings might appear, we all have somebody out there who’d be interested to read about them, I can accept that some people just aren’t in touch with their inner writer and will either figure it out one day or they won’t. Good luck to ‘em, I say.

Others claim that the only stuff they’d care to write about is so deeply personal that they couldn’t bear to share it so openly. Fair enough – I’ve used that excuse myself at times when personal circumstances have caused me to temporarily abandon my blog. The way I see it, if you’re trying to choose between sharing deeply personal thoughts you’d really rather keep to yourself and writing about stuff that’s really not important to you just so you can post something (something that isn’t deeply personal thoughts you’d rather keep to yourself), posting nothing is an acceptable third option. I’m waaaaaaaaaaaay too young to cut my ear off just so you’ve got something to read during your morning coffee.

Then there are the deluded, self-important assholes who smugly claim that they simply don’t have the time to blog and can’t understand how I manage. It’s hard to ignore the implicit accusation that the time I spend tinkering with my various online projects (blogs I maintain, communities I belong to, wikis I contribute to etc) is somehow wasted, a sink into which I pour my otherwise productive time.

I found the clip below about a month ago, showing author Clay Shirky speaking at a web 2.0 conference earlier in the year. It’s an insightful and well-delivered perspective on where this shift to online is taking us, starting with the wry observation that if gin was the critical technology of the industrial revolution (numbing the upheaval of transitioning to an industrial society), the critical technology of the post-war years must have been the sitcom.

Shirky makes a brilliant point in that we – individually and as a society – have a massive ‘cognitive surplus’ that we just don’t have a use for (if we did, there wouldn’t be a surplus). Throughout history this had never been a problem, because we used to spend all our time hunting mammoths, tending fields, and slogging it out in Mr Bumble’s work house. The dawn of the 40-hour week may have freed us from servitude in many respects, but it also created a problem we’d never faced before – what to do with all that spare time? For decades, television has been the sponge that soaked up all this latent time and energy, but now we’re finding new and better things to do with our time. Many of these new pastimes – such as playing elf warrior in Warcraft, or trading pictures of kittens with amusing facial expressions – might not be considered productive in the traditional sense, but it’s something, and watching television is nothing. And as the man says, it’s better to do something than nothing.

The numbers are astonishing. The estimated 100 million man-hours that have gone into Wikipedia to date may seem like a hell of a lot, but bear in mind that the Internet-connected population watches a TRILLION hours of television per year – enough to build 10,000 Wikipedias. That’s one hell of an asset, if we could only figure out how to use it – imagine the possibilities!

No, seriously, please imagine the possibilities. How do I find the time to create things online? How can you not?

Click here to watch part 2. If you’d rather just read about it, Shirky’s written account of the talk can be found here.

On Blogging…

I’ve had this idea floating around for some time but haven’t quite been able to articulate it. So here’s a feeble first attempt – bear with me and I’ll hope you get my point. Any and all comments / suggestions etc appreciated…

I’ve been posting to this blog pretty regularly for quite some time, and those of you who have been reading for a while will have noticed some substantial variations in content matter. I’d like to think that some of my posts are pretty insightful and well written. I’ve had a lot of positive feedback and recognition this past year – both in links and comments, as well as a surprisingly high readership.

Other posts, for example last year’s ranting about Grampa Joe and the Cat in the Hat, could be regarded as off colour at best. Given that I’m currently looking for work (as you can tell, I get bored quickly and the consequences can be dire), it has occurred to me that I may not be doing myself any favours by tainting the ‘good’ posts with what others (potential employers, clients, business partners, whatever…) may find disturbing.

So why post them? The fact of the matter is, I feel that to post anything based on what I feel ‘people’ (whoever they might be) want to read as opposed to what I have to say would be dishonest. It’d also be a hell of a lot harder to manage (keeping track of who my readers are and what they’re interested in before I even begin to write anything). I also firmly believe it would be the end of what up to this point has become a pretty sizeable and loyal following.

In your traditional publishing environment (TV, newspapers, radio, magazines, and most ‘web 1.0′ sites), you start with your audience and work backwards. E.g. ‘We want to appeal to 18 to 35 year-old men, so this is the kind of content we’ll create/source and this is the style in which we’ll deliver it’. What you are effectively doing is constructing a persona for the publication based around a pre-conceived notion of what viewers / readers / listeners will identify with, and then attempting to provide content in a style consistent with that persona.

Blogging – or rather, good blogging – is a different animal. To put it simply, this is all about me. I didn’t need to create a persona for this blog, because I already had one (mine). I didn’t need to decide on a theme or style either, because I just write about the things that interest me in the style that comes naturally. And here’s the rub – you’ll either like what I write or you won’t, but if you do, you’ll be back. Why?

Let’s take an analogy from the world of dating…

Bill is looking to hook up with the girl of his dreams. He’s set his heart on landing a 19 year-old fashion model. Bill does some research and figures out that models tend to like rich, muscle-bound party boys, so he starts hitting the gym and throwing a lot of money around at the hottest clubs in town.

Bob is also looking to get loved-up. He doesn’t have anyone in mind, other than that she needs to love him for who he is. So he puts himself out there and makes an effort to get to know people, but takes pains to ensure people get to know the real him.

Aftert a while, Bill and Bob have both met people. Who do you think has the stronger relationship? My guess is Bob. She may not be the girl he had in mind (she couldn’t be, as he started out with no such preconceptions), but she loves him for who he is, rather than for his efforts to be who he thinks she wants him to be. Bill has based his relationship on two critical assumptions – he thinks he knows what the object of his desire wants, and he also thinks he can be that man. Sounds like a house of cards to me.

What does this have to do with blogging? Let me answer by asking you another question: There are millions of blogs out there, so why are you reading this one? My guess is that if this isn’t your first time here, it has more to do with how well you relate to me than anything I’ve written. See, this blog is a nothing more than a reflection of the stuff I find interesting expressed in my own personal style. You’ll either dig it (me) or you won’t.

Perez Hilton. Rob Scoble. Om Malik. Matt Drudge (not a blogger as such, but I think he deserves mention here – will explain later). These are some of the web’s new superstars, and they sure as hell didn’t get there via market research, brand workshops, focus groups and Deputy Assistant Sub-Editors. Think about that, people.

**Afterthought**

Does this mean I was faking it back when I was working at Marker and regularly contributing to the company blog? I don’t think so. Like Eddie said, we all wear a bunch of different hats, and when I was blogging at Marker I was wearing my Marker hat (I know I’m deviating from the point de Bono was making, but the analogy still fits). Avoiding cursewords and not posting about porn (ok, bad example) and child-molesting children’s book characters was in no way dishonest, because ‘Marker Stuart’ didn’t feel the need to write about such things or in that style.

What’s the lesson here? Still trying to work that one out. The first thing that occurs to me is that a lot of people I know are reluctant to blog and I think many are simply afraid people won’t like what they have to say. The way I see it, no matter what you write some people will love it and some people will hate it. That being the case, the only sensible option is to be true to yourself and your readers by writing what comes naturally – be yourself instead of attempting to please the faceless masses. I’m sure more will occur to me over the next wee while now that I’ve got this off my chest, so stay tuned.

Thanks for dropping by.

If it came with a headstone, I’d buy one!

BMW was a client of mine for about three years, prior to my leaving Marker at the start of last year. They could be a challenge at times (I’ve yet to find a client who isn’t) but they were damn cool to work with.

A lot of people daydream about winning the lottery and what they’d do with the money. Most will reel off a shopping list starting with a big house and flash car, most likely a Ferrari or a Porsche. Sod that. When I hit the big time the only thing that would deter me from buying an M5 or M6 is the knowledge that I will almost certainly – and at no fault of the car or its manufacturer – die behind the wheel of said supercar (or in close proximity to its crumpled remains).

Last year I was fortunate to land a spot on one of BMW’s regular driver training courses at Pukekohe race track. After a day of instruction, skills testing and driving brand new 330i’s like they were stolen, instructor Mike Eady (former Porsche Racing Series champion and class winner of the Nurbergring 24-hour race) took us all out for ‘hot laps’ in the M5 he’d been driving all day. The bog-standard M5 he’d picked up at Jerry Clayton’s that morning…

Four passengers. Hot brakes. Badly work tyres. 3 passengers. 245 km/h (153 mph) in 5th gear. Apparently he decided not to use 6th or 7th ‘cos he ‘didn’t want to push it’.

The M cars are fucking monsters, and superior to every supercar you could think of, with the possible exception of the Bugatti Veyron (but with a $4m price tag, the Veyron might as well be hypothetical). Screw longeivity – I want one!

The first video I stumbled across this afternoon, and shows German racing legend Hans Stuck taking an M6 up to 194 mph (310 km/h) on the Autobahn. The second is from 2004, and shows the same guy setting a new lap record at the Nurburgring in an M3 GTR. At one point you see a little black dot appear in front of him, get slowly bigger and then flash past his side window. In case you miss it, it’s a 911 Turbo doing over 100 mph.

Enjoy!

My new favourite song

I know I’ve been saying it for over a year and it hasn’t happened yet… but it’ll happen. The bubble will burst, and I for one will be laughing my ass off*.

*Sour grapes? Probably