Russell Davies

not urban spam and a planner to admire

Richard Reynolds is a planner to admire. I'd heard about his smart, interesting t-shirts a while ago, and ordered a couple, and they're great. And then I heard that he was also doing this, which is one of the best ideas I've heard in a long time and is the complete antithesis of urban spam, and should be a compulsary activity for everyone who ever felt tempted to do some dumb ambient campaign.

And - and this should be useful and instructive for all you junior planners and people looking to find a job - there's something incredibly hire-able about someone like Richard, someone who does stuff, as opposed to the usual planning I-just-think-stuff stereotype, this is a very valuable quality in a planner. (Of course I've never met the man, so he could be a horrible planner, but I very much doubt it.) Visit Guerilla Gardening. Give the man some support.

lightweights are late

I'm increasingly convinced that business (and life) success is incredibly simple. And that the single, simple key to wealth, success and happiness is getting up early.

It's been almost universally true in my experience that the smartest, most interesting, most creative people are the early risers. And that the midnight oil merchants are arses.

I enjoy playing a little game with people who want to have a meeting (especially when I'm not keen to meet them) I always say let's meet 'first thing' and see when they think that is. Anytime after 8 and they're a lightweight. (I did get into a bit of a game of bluff with someone else once, who was clearly also a morning person and we ended up meeting at 5. But it was the best meeting I've ever had.)

Company meetings, management meetings, status meetings should all be at 7. And then you can have an hour's meeting and do an hour's work before the slack bohemians turn up. And you can leave them mystified when you go home at 4 and still achieve way more than they do.

splendid crack

I enjoyed a splendid East London coffee with Iain Tate of crackunit on Friday. An excellent man who pointed me at two of the best sites I've seen for ages. Netvibes which you probably all know about but which is a fantastic way of drawing all your RSS stuff together and is my new home page, and We Feel Fine which Iain explains much better than I. I was also pleased to learn he's another East Midlander (Staffs). We E-Midlanders have to stick together. Maybe we should start an East Midlands blog ring. It'd be called eyupmiduck.

no chat, no nothing tomorrow

                        

Sorry. On top of everthing else, I've just discovered I have a meeting tomorrow so it's all cancelled anyway. I will make another plan and I will be more organised and technologically-prepared. Sorry.

OK. Forget the campfire thing

I've just found out it's going to cost me $49 to get 60 people chatting. I'll think of something else.

skypecast scaredy-cat rethink

I'm cancelling the Skypecast scheduled for tomorrow evening. Not sure I'm ready for that. But I'm going back to the orginal plan and do a chat. I'm going to suggest Campfire since you can do it through a regular browser and I like the stuff that 37signals build. Time will be the same - 6pm BST. The address for the Campfire room is planningschool.campfirenow.com and the password is iloverussell. But I think you don't need the password, I think you can go straight in as a guest if you go here - http://planningschool.campfirenow.com/95aac

If anyone's around this evening at 6pm BST I'm going to try and have a practise then.

now called The Pelamis Sea

The vote is over. The people have spoken. This is now called The Pelamis Sea and Corentin is the winner. Many congratulations. (Corentin, can you email me and I'll arrange to get you your book?)

north sea voting finishes at midnight

Er, that's it really. Voting on this finishes at midnight (BST).

Peter Serafinowicz - the future of something or something

Peter Serafinowicz is a funny and clever man. He did Look Around You, was in Shaun Of The Dead and supplied the voice of Darth Maul. (And was regularly on the much-under-rated 99p challenge.)

What makes all this relevant for all you communications thinker types is that he's started bypassing all the traditional content channels. He's been making demos of stuff, mini-pilots really, and putting them on YouTube. They're parodies of E! news, about the Oscars and the Apple v Apple case. And they're very good. This won't make him a fortune or win him worldwide fame on its own; but it builds an audience, it gets him instant feedback and it makes TV channel owners slightly nervous, because it's the start of a shift in the balance of power.

read these books

I just finished reading Apex Hides The Hurt by Colson Whitehead which is a brilliant novel about a naming consultant. It's one of those books which makes you question a lot of the stuff you do every day while simultaneously giving you ideas about how to do it. I love the way it's set in the present but also seems to be in a slightly timeless, slightly disturbing Americana.

And it didn't really occur to me until I'd finished it, but Mr Whitehead also wrote The Intuitionist, which is similarly brilliant and odd, and concerns a fierce dispute between factions of elevator inspectors. On the one side there are Empiricsts, on the other, Intuitionists. It should feel familiar to planners and market researchers.