So next week I'm doing this Bucharest thing with Neil, Ben and Jeffre. And at some point I'm bound to be stuck with them for a while in a cafe, seedy dive or airport lounge. So I thought I might as well take my tape recorder and ask them some questions.
Anyone got any questions for any of them? Individually or collectively?
I bumped into Funky Dave today. I walked into a Starbucks down by Tate Modern and there he was typing away on his laptop and chatting on this phone. You couldn't ask for a nicer person to bump into. Brilliant. I've been in that Starbucks once in my life before. It felt like a remarkable coincidence.
And I bumped into Terry Watkins yesterday. We came out of the flat, taking Arthur for his first day back at school and Terry was sitting at the cafe across the road. Marvelous. You couldn't ask for a nicer person to bump into. Terry's office is way over in Farringdon. It felt like a remarkable coincidence.
But of course it wasn't that remarkable. London's a big place. But we don't live in all of it. We live in a distributed village determined by our interests, our income, our work, our habits.
In fact Terry and I have a slightly creepy habit of bumping into each other in places which rather emphasise this point; once at Mid-Century Modern in Dulwich, once in Borough Market, and once in Selfridges. Your only possible conclusion from these meetings is that we're both impossibly pretentious, middle-class tossers probably engaged in the creative industries. (Sorry Terry, you know what I mean, I'm making a point here.)
That's what I like about coffee morning. It's like a meeting of the distributed village idiots/elders.
Come along. Tomorrow morning. (Friday). 11am. The Breakfast Club.
I guess I'm not alone in my car-skepticism. All hail The Onion, journal of respectable and well thought-out opinion. Via plannerliness.
I'm not a big fan of motorbikes. They seem to represent all that's wrong with motorised transport. Dangerous. Fast. Uncomfortable. Hard to drive. But we saw the Goldwing Light Parade at the Blackpool Illuminations and I was completely captivated.
It probably helps that Goldwings are some of the most car-like bikes you can get and seem to attract a different sort of rider than the usual macho bike nonsense. But the lights were brilliant. Actually joyful. (And really hard to photograph, at speed, with my little digital camera. Though actually I quite like the effect, it gets at some of the pleasure of the things.) The lights enhance, extend and camoflage the shape of the bike, making them look more like UFOs than anything I've ever seen.
It reminded me of the only good bit of the movie Black Rain; the cool Japanese trucks with the scrolling lights. Those things are genius. I can't find good pictures of them. But check out this page.
But it got me thinking about customisation, which is clearly a fairly deep urge amongst so many car-owners and how I've always wondered why ordinary car manufacturers seem to make it so hard for people. Obviously people do mod their cars. All the time. And some of them are gorgeous and some are horrible. But it's actually pretty hard to do. It's not like cars come with optional wings you can snap in and out. Or with Lego studs so you can stick stuff on. They're made of glossy, shiny metal which is spoiled the moment you go near it. It actively discourages experimentation. Strange.
Since pictures of Arthur are now officially sanctioned by Business Week, I couldn't resist these two of Anne and Arthur from our trip to Blackpool's Pleasure Beach last week.
If only driving real cars was this much fun.
Jon Howard does a fantastic round-up on Living Brands of posts worth reading every month. He's been kind enough to feature me in there. And up until about 30 seconds ago I was just pleased. It's a flattering thing and a smart service for all us blog readers.
But now I've suddenly realised it's just another hurdle to clear. I've got to write posts, build traffic, increase my technorati ranking, earn a living, go for runs, do press-ups, write a book, be a Dad, and, and, write something good enough for Jon every month. Blimey. Too much pressure man.
Ed Cotton of Influx/BSSP has very kindly offered two passes to their msquared conference as a give-away. So, since the conference looks well worth going to and each pass represents 'a $195 value' I feel I should make you work for it.
So we're going to do a two stage thing like the cool question.
Since the theme of the conference is 'what will marketing become?' you need to answer that question: 'what will marketing become?' in 20 words or less.
Then we'll vote and the favourite two answers get the tickets. If anyone can't get to SFO for the conference, or doesn't know someone who wants to go then we'll move down the list until we get to someone. And we'll find a nice prize of some sort for the first two anyway (though probably not worth $200), so don't just enter to win the passes, enter to prove that your the Emperor or Empress of Planning.
Does that make sense? I'm in a rambly and incoherent mood tonight.
So, stage one - answer the question ' what will marketing become?' In 20 words or less. As a comment on this post. By midnight GMT this Saturday. Win fabulous prizes.
This is the perfect t-shirt product for planners. (I wish we'd done this. But don't worry we're working on cool products for planners.)
Anyway, you know how planners always go on about people defining themselves through their media choices and interests. T-lists makes this process very public. Genius. And it taps into that thing you always see with research respondents - they're always desperate to see what categories you put them in.
My only problem is I'm taking forever to decide what I want to put on the 'interests' t-shirt. Because obviously I'm trying to look cool, which involves not looking like I'm trying to look cool. Which involves carefully managing my appearance of authenticity. Which is always tricky. But necessary.
Give me another couple of days. I'll get it right. One question - if I put 'lego' as an interest; cool or not? How about syndrums? HotWheels? Bacon?
I'm a massive fan of Melvyn Bragg's Radio 4 series In Our Time. It's absolutely the best of what public service broadcasting should be. Melvyn and three experts gather in a studio and explain exactly what's important and worth knowing about some vastly important subject. The last series included an hour on things like: Greek comedy, the heart, carbon, negative numbers and the Carolingian renaissance. It's brilliant. You feel cleverer just listening to it.
Except I never know enough about any of the subjects to have my own opinion, or to feel I could add something, or to argue with the radio. It's simply too clever and high-brow for me.
So I began to think about those conversations you have with your friends about stuff you all know about, the stuff of pop culture, not high culture and I thought how much fun it would be to replicate those kinds of chats in an In Our Time format. So it's not professionals talking about an area of expertise, it's enthusiastic amateurs, talking about something they love. With the passions, conceits and errors that entails. I thought of calling it In Our Own Time to signal its amateur status.
And today, a couple of friends of mine were kind enough to come and do a bit of a demo with me. To see if it'll work. I play the Melyvn role, since it means I don't have to know much, and I've got Helen Castor (who's a bit of a coup, since she's been on the real In Our Time, in an expert capacity, she knows about history) and Jeffre Jackson to come and talk with me about Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
I really enjoyed doing it, Jeffre and Helen are smart and interesting people and I learned a lot. Huge thanks to them. The audio is a bit quiet, but OK. And I think it worked out well. Love to know what you think. Is this at all listenable? What other pop culture subjects would we like to see covered? Do any of you fancy being amateur experts in something? I'm looking for people for programme two.
(It's about an hour, and 60MB)
I've been thinking for a while that I should point you all at City Of Sound because it's such a brilliant place for thinking and stimulus. And now the perfect opportunity has come up. This post is a collection of City Of Sound's greatest hits. And they're all well worth reading. Honestly. All of them.
