A real face for the brand.

@Krishna De ( http;//twitter.com/krishnaDe )retweeted a link about Three things Google is up to while we focus on Google Plus http://goo.gl/K9eeN < an important post by @SteveRubel in Adage

The thing that came to my mind was about the reference to companies needing 'real people' to represent them. The larger the company the more difficult, maybe undesirable, and possibly false, is the idea of having a single 'real person' representing the 'brand'. G+'s lack of brand support at the moment highlights the difference wants of the people behind the brand and the brand itself.

Many geeks 'are' the brand and this may be an opportunity for the micro-businesses to have a higher profile than larger ones, the question is how to make the most of chance.

Excitement about Nanode

I attended Ken Boak's ( http://sustburbia.blogspot.com ) Nanode Workshop at the London Hackspace recently and built my Nanode5 kit. This AVR microcontroller is a low cost simple version of the Arduino + Ethershield. It is ideal for Home Monitoring and simple Automation projects.

I have created a special Blog to track my progress and experience with my Nanode.

You can find it at http://j.mp/ntbee [ http://nanodethebee.posterous.com ] and also a twitter log at http://twitter.com/nanodethebee

Saving separate audio from DOT flv file

I recorded an audio only broadcast using uStream and wanted to use the audio in a podcast after editing. I usually use Audacity to edit audio and could not import the flv format into Audacity 1.13beta directly using Windows Vista.

I search Google but the suggested solutions using VLC command line seemed to be Linux specific, but they triggered me into looking at VLC more carefully and found that using VLC 1.1.7 [ http://videolan.org ] I can save the file from within VLC using "right-Click/Save/" and selecting "Profile Audio/mp3"

I am noting this here as I could be helpful to others.

What is the Big Idea? Post1

After David Cameron's speech was in the news yesterday, I was driving to an appointment and I heard several phone-ins on BBC local radio stations around London and the tone of the comments was mostly cynical, skeptical, confused or un-trusting. This does not surprise me at all.

I am hearing this alot. So I thought I would start collecting up links to various views, conversations and resources around the subject.

My first link is to the www.NESTA.org.uk event Collaborative Consumption resource, a set of videos recorded at the second of their series on this subject.

I have started to watch the recordings of the presentations at the second event in a series. The focus of this session was 'Trust'

The event was chaired by Jon Kingsbury, Director at NESTA. Speakers included Rachel Botsman, Jonathan Simmons from Public Zone, Stan Stalnaker, founder Hub Culture, Ben Reason, Designer LiveWork and Meriel Lenfestey, founder Ecomodo.

Rachel Botsman discussed online examples of tools for building trust, quoting Ebay and TaskRabbit, AirB&B and Couchsurfing.

Jennie Winhall of www.participle.net identified 'service users' are seen as 'assets' or 'drains'. Discussed a private social network tool sponsored by NESTA and being used in Southwark to drive community interaction and turn people into 'community assets' rather than 'drains' and address the individual hoarding of services and to build trust relationships.

Drawbridges built with red tape.

To certify or not to certify?

At a time when there is a call for the reduction of the 'red tape' involved in business, it is fascinating to hear business owners argue for extra regulation.

Listening to a hairdresser argue for more regulation of Hairdressers reminded me again how one persons freedom is another's prison. The desire of cooperation, community and collaboration is at odds to monopoly, greed and elitism and I think red tape is really the red line that separates the two.

It seems to me that certification is just one bit of Red Tape, and has been seen as a bad thing/good thing that needs addressing ever since the year dot.

A Google never forgets.

Following an interesting discussion at the TVSMC event recently I though I should note the details for others reference.

We were discussing whether it was worth commenting on a blog or news article some time after its posting and how it is easy for good intentions to go out the window, and being a time to think of 'things for the new year' should the past lost intentions be forgot.

My view is that commenting and updates should be done whenever. My thinking goes as follows.

Your blog posts, Twitter comments, FB wall writings, etc will never be forgotten by the googles. so take advantage of this rather than treating online as if it was dead tree media.

You are in the world of brand building once you are online at all.

This thinking is totally undermined by the blogs and interactive sites that solicited input from readers and then after a short time they close the comments. In my view this is short-sighted, misguided and rude.

I comment on this subject further on my Creativity and Greentech podcast Show HC61 (available via http://hcpodcast.mevio.com/feed/ )

Who is in charge of banking?

Listening to a comment on the radio this morning set me thinking.

The commentator said “who is in charge of banking, we all thought that the bankers and regulators were in control, but it seems that there was no regulation or anyone in charge”

My thinking lead me to recall a scene I had watched from the home-office window yesterday. A coating of snow lay upon everything, and the birds were struggling to find some food.

A neighbour of ours had planted a sapling in their front garden a few years ago. A slow growing variety, it has taken those years to get to the small size it is now. It is a type that has red berries at this time and this year it is laden with red.

My eye was caught by a small flock of about 50 starling sized birds, wheeling and swooping in the sky.

As I watched they swooped in a gradually closing circle around the tree until the leader suddenly dropped from the swoop and landed on the tree, the immediate followers landed while the laggards swooped in another circuit as it seemed they had not expected a landing on that particular pass.

The leading birds grabbed beakfuls of berries and then, as the tail end of the flock landed, the leader and first tranche took flight, very quickly followed by all the rest.

This activity was repeated many times as I watched, and as is my way, I was trying to understand the process and the thinking behind it.

It seemed to me the leading part of the flock were getting most berries. They spent most time on the tree. The whole flock was being lead, as is usual, by a single bird, the rest following in the classic Starling formation.

What did I observe?:

• When the first bird landed the formation split into two and the trailing birds did one more circuit lead by an alternate bird.
• The leading bird was gorging for the longest time
• The early following birds got the second longest time.
• The trailing birds had less than a third of the time, firstly because they missed the instruction or whatever message to land, and thus they had to complete a extra circuit; secondly because as the lead bird left shortly after they landed and they did not stay behind their gorging was much shorter.

Could this be the structure of control in the banking business?

There appears to be a hierarchical structure in both, but the command flow seems much more fluid.

• What are the benefits to this structure?
• Would it be better to all land together?
• Would the tree have collapsed under the weight?
• Should the second tranche have stayed rather than taking flight?
• Who was acting as lookout?

I know there have been studies of bird flight behaviour and will look there for some insights, at the moment there are more questions than answers, maybe you can help point toward some answers?