I've been getting tons of comment spam recently and I've beent travelling a bit so it's been building up without being deleted. So I've turned comment moderation on for now. Hopefully I can turn it off again soon and the spam storm will have passed like a spring shower.
chilling
I bought a DS Lite at Heathrow, and Dr Kawahima's Brain Training game. This was the slightly alarming result of my first go. So my brain is in its 70s. This may explain my vauge memories of the Second World War. And my body is probably in its 60s.
p-school?
I got this question by email the other day. I don't know what to answer, but I thought you lot might have some pros and cons. Anyone?
"I was just wondering if you could take a moment from your busy schedule to toss some advice my way. I have had about 2 years of experience in the Account Management side of Advertising and I am highly considering a move to Account Planning. I am currently getting "Apprenticed" by two amazing Account Planners, helping out with research and some creative briefs BUT I was wondering what your opinion on more formal forms of Account Planning training was.
An example of more formal training would be VCU's Adcenter, Miami Ad Schools Account Planning Bootcamp, Etc. My university education and experience was based on strategy and research and I would really like to push my career that way.
Any advice or input you could give would be greatly appreciated."
expertise
Was in a Starbucks in Kansas City this morning and saw this on the blackboard. It reminded me that I'm increasingly convinced of the importance of brand expertise. Expertise feels like a potentially important component of interestingness. In a world where brand size is increasingly un-useful expertise is one of those things where scale really helps. If you're really big and focused on one thing you ought to know a lot about it, and you ought to get a lot of value out of sharing that with people. Especially if you can make the sharing human-sized.
small, good idea
I like this 'traveller's edition' of the new Bill Bryson, available from the Borders at Heathrow. Most of the 'airport exclusives' you get are bigger than your average paperback which always seems annoying to me. This one is hardback but it's nice and compact, which makes sense.
more radio 4
The Lord Melvyn and In Our Time is back. Hurrah. Michael Morpurgo embarks on a 30-part history of British childhood. But I thought the September 27th issue of Thinking Allowed was particularly interesting (especially related to John Grant's anti-changism on Letsseewhathappens.) They look, in different ways, at cultural infatuation with change.
(I also like that I listened to this very Radio 4 programme via my laptop in a Kansas City hotel room at 3 in the morning.)
radio 4 - civilisation in 30 minute chunks
I'm a big fan of BBC Radio 4, all right-thinking people are and I'm always keen to share the interesting bits of it that I've heard. I've been using the Squidoo, and I like Squidoo as an idea, but it's just not working for me. (And right now it's not working at all.) It's too hard to get in and out of a different set of pages and interfaces and menus and stuff. So I don't update it enough. So instead I might start pointing at stuff via here. First couple you can listen to online:
The CIA and the Avant-Garde. A brilliant thing about the Internationalen Ferienkursen für Neue Musik, a festival of challengingly difficult music, funded covertly by Langley. Marvelous.
As Safe As Houses. A series about property from Marcus Brigstocke. Mildly funny and mildy thought-provoking. That sounds like damning with faint praise, but I like mild. Contains a good fact to throw around - there are 60 million people in Britain, and 60 million acres of land. That means me, Anne and Arthur should have 3 acres. Where are our 3 acres?
beard science
The world of blogging is a strange and marvelous place. I don't know Dan. Never met him. Don't think we've even swapped emails. Yet I feel certain that he'd appreciate this book I'm currently reading. Which I think is very good. Though the Amazon reviewer doesn't rate it as highly as this book which I'm planning on getting next. That is all.