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Sunday thoughts

Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on January 6th, 2008
Tagged as: Acer, Acer Blog, Copywriting, Dell, Language Is Free, Richard Binhammer

I’ve been giving DreamHost a really hard time of late and apparently they have not been acting without cause. For whatever reason, best left to techies, I’ve been abusing their procwatch program whatever that is - they even explained the way of the world with an emphatic “procwatch kills NG lingolook killed 30846″.

Good Lord. Lingolook was killed?

Tech support says it’s a combination of poor code (probable) and high traffic (improbable) which leaves me with the understanding that I have a duff site that no-one visits. I like to think positively so I’ve replaced that possibility with another opinion and it has something to do with my 2008 online resurgence. I have been murmuring about my projects for long enough and the hard-working Sarah from Blogging Expertise is finally coming up with the goods and her uploading and tweaking has put the cheap but oh-so-very-cheerful DreamHost contract I had under too much strain. So, despite all her hard work, it’s all her fault
Still at least it brought me to my senses. I’ve upgraded my account to a Virtual Private Server which sounds like the IT equivalent of the Champagne Room and I’m sure will work out just as expensive but at least it should keep things running. If I disappear you now know why.

Don’t know about you but I’m really looking forward to 2008.

For starters I get to see whether my attempt at putting emotion into the Acer brand gets a warm or frosty welcome. Their annual kick-off is due at the end of January and this year it’s going to be totally different as it’s no longer a “one-nation-one-station” event but something more along the lines of “welcome Acer, Gateway and Packard Bell to your new home (Acer Group), allow us to present ourselves and show you that we’re a hip, smart, forward thinking bunch who know what we’re about, where we’re going and how we’re going to get there”.

Acer 2.0? Well that’s the plan…

Of course there’s a lot riding on this. I might be a master wordsmith but if the company doesn’t believe its own hype then the battle’s half lost. My guess is the company believes in itself but doesn’t yet fully understand its own hype and by that I mean the ability to measure the value of what it does beyond profit margins and market share, so anything designed to get it away from its “spreadset” (the habit of looking at the world through a spreadsheet) has got to be good for morale. Good for customers, good for products and, yes, good for Excel.

What else? Well I’ve set my sights on Canon’s latest HD gem, the HV20. In a few weeks I’m going to start filming multiple episodes of my free English language course site and see where it goes.

Allow me to explain a little about my past: like most English-speaking people who end up in Italy, my first job was teaching English. In fact I’ve been involved with my own language ever since just in different measures. Just check out my über glamorous career path:

Teacher –> translator –> creative translator –> copywriter.

That third category is an important moment in the life of any translator. Its like professional puberty and it comes when the translator’s balls suddenly get big enough for him or her to say: “Hey! This sounds crap in English (or whatever the destination language is). Why don’t you re-write the whole thing like this?” More than experience, this moment requires quite a lot of courage and really does separate the men from the boys or whatever the female equivalent to that is. From there on in, you’re good enough to write your own stuff.

Anyway, despite a stellar career as the world’s most invisible copywriter there is nothing like teaching. I think it has something to do with live feedback or something. Whatever. I really miss it so I’ve decided it’s time to get back into it, although in a version more in line with my way of seeing the world and that’s through a blog. I know how it should end up, but not how it should start so I’m just going to start recording and see where it goes.

Things to look out for in 2008?

I think Dell are going to take online conversations to new heights so expect to see Richard on Oprah in 3Q. I think 2008 will see Acer updating its frankly appalling website in tune with the newest kids on its family block. I also think this is the year flash memory notebooks finally go mainstream which means no or very few mechanical parts which means long, long battery life. Expect to see the word “longevity” come back into favour. How about calling it the UHT laptop (Ultra High Transportability)? Well it worked for milk…

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The difference between saying something and thinking it

Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on May 29th, 2007
Tagged as: Acer, Asides, Edelman, Gaping Void, Richard Binhammer, Shel Israel, Social Media

I made an important discovery yesterday. One of those blinding flashes that sneak up on you when you least expect them, yet are so bright they burn colourful imprints onto your retina so that you can still see them even if you close your eyes.

It seems I have more in common with Hugh McLeod than I imagined.

Many years ago I dropped out of university before I even had the chance to start. I went to a very good private school in England and was all set to follow the crib-to-grave groove and enter the medical profession.

Until I went to hospital.

The school organized a works-experience week and I and two others (who made it to the other side) were shuffled into an operating theatre to see what surgeons do first hand. It also gave me the opportunity to see who the surgeons were.

That day I learnt the most important lesson of my life. Who you are and what you do aren’t necessarily the same thing.

The English education system makes it almost impossible to back out of your chosen career path at the last minute which is why at the tender age of 19, I found myself on a plane heading to Italy, where I’ve lived ever since.

That day returned to me recently during one of those “what am I doing with my life??” moments when I was blinded by that flash I mentioned earlier.

It seems that the cutting edge of the blogosphere is social networking. It’s like a massive, uncontrollable Hollywood-style scandal rag reporting ‘round the clock on who’s sleeping where, who said what and how my judgement is invariably wiser than yours.

Getting on this train is easy: Read, write and link. Read, write and link. Hugh calls it “people talking” and people talk perpetually.

Like mainstream chat show ghosts, the stars of the blogosphere are beyond reproach. They’re sneezers, opinion makers, forces to be reckoned with. The rest of us drop like flies.

There is a holier-than-thow element to this. Apparently, to be successful, you’ve got to have your ear (aggregator) to the ground, know the movers and shakers and hang out at the right blog expos. Even better, vlog about them. Corporations in particular can’t miss a beat.

Now I’m the first to admit that, expos aside, I do this myself – I’m doing it on this blog and in this post. It’s also how I met my friend, colleague and rival Richard and it’s how I plan on meeting many others in future.

That’s what I do. But is it who I am?

Didn’t blogging start out as a “web log”? A diary of me, my thoughts and a way of sharing my chunk of life?

I guess at some point some big-boy bloggers’ personal conversations dried up and they sought out other conversations, building traffic for no other reason than because they channelled their thoughts into the comments of others (link love), fuelling a never-ending conversation that systematically leads them towards a conversational anti-climax they knew was coming anyway.

Boy does this system get you noticed (and ranked).

But what exactly is the point?

In my book, the only things that ignite and build genuine interest either have a start and a finish or, at the very least, a sense of purpose. Anything else is just a scratched record, with clicks replaced by links that, sooner or later, take you back to where you started.

For my job, the Edelman/Vista fiasco had a start and a finish and it was an amazing experience to be in the middle. Following and countering the adverse PR for my client was an education in syndication management. The bickering about who got the damned Ferrari notebooks and who didn’t frankly didn’t light my pipe at all.

So where’s the link with Hugh? Hugh writes passionately about purpose in the epic “How to be Creative” article.

“One evening, after one false start too many, I just gave up. Sitting at a bar, feeling a bit burned out by work and life in general, I just started drawing on the back of business cards for no reason. I didn’t really need a reason. I just did it because it was there, because it amused me in a kind of random, arbitrary way.

Of course it was stupid. Of course it was uncommercial. Of course it wasn’t going to go anywhere. Of course it was a complete and utter waste of time. But in retrospect, it was this built-in futility that gave it its edge. Because it was the exact opposite of all the “Big Plans” my peers and I were used to making.

It was so liberating not to have to be thinking about all that, for a change.

It was so liberating to be doing something that didn’t have to impress anybody, for a change.

It was so liberating to have something that belonged just to me and no one else, for a change.

It was so liberating to feel complete sovereignty, for a change. To feel complete freedom, for a change.

And of course, it was then, and only then, that the outside world started paying attention.”

I just walked that same path with my wife and our Runaway Parents and Genitori in Fuga projects. The fact is, it’s got nothing at all to do with what we do, but everything about who we really are.

There’s a different flavour to projects you have, to use Hugh’s words, “complete sovereignty over”.

“The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. How your own sovereignty inspires other people to find their own sovereignty, their own sense of freedom and possibility, will change the world far more than the work’s objective merits ever will.

Your idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing.”

Writing about who you are also puts what you do into perspective, draining some of its ultimate value perhaps, but forcing you to put your long-term strategy into perspective.

Even if you still can’t resist that one last link to someone further up the tree who absolutely, without question has something interesting to say about the state of the union.

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Inspired by a Blue Monster

Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on April 23rd, 2007
Tagged as: Asides, Copywriting, Gab Gab Gab, Gaping Void, IT Blogs

I love it when this happens.

Lately I’ve been starting early and finishing waaay too late to be having any fun. My brain is so focused I’ve actually lost my peripheral sense of humour and have noticed I have iTunes playing less often. Productivity? Exhaustion? I don’t know as I don’t have any grey matter left over to give it any thought.

Anyway, like I said I work late. Tonight’s no exception and I’m having a hard time being creative. I’ve been writing almost non-stop for two weeks flat and my inspirations are drying up faster than I can type.

At times like these I usually start doing something I’d more or less given up. This time around I got back on my bike. Ahh, my beautiful Look 486. 8kgs of pure rocket science. 50km a day is enough to clear the mind (and lower the scales).

But not right now. Right now it’s dark and going out on the bike wouldn’t resolve anything as I need to be creative. Which leads me nicely to where this story is going. Click here, click there and I found myself being drip-fed some Hugh MacLeod.

Better yet I found myself watching a video about Hugh’s finest work, The Blue Monster.

Microsoft has a story to tell. My clients have a story to tell. I have a story to tell. This is well worth a watch if you don’t think you do.

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Blogs in the “real” world

Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on March 12th, 2007
Tagged as: IT Blogs, Long Tail, Shel Israel

I read an interesting article over on Shel Israel’s blog about how Tom Shelley of the Economist had started mailing him asking for ideas on the direction the Economist should take while developing its own blog.

The post immediately after was one from Shel asking the public how his new book was shaping up.

This product/public interaction got me thinking about how one could or should adopt social media to create and market a new product and whether the need to satisfy public demand stifles brand identity by outsourcing it to the world at large.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m already a self-declared fan of Dell’s IdeaStorm and firmly believe that direct public interaction in shaping a company’s products and strategies is a fascinating development of this new medium.

But at the same time, I can’t help thinking this strategy risks pandering to a fickle public hunger for mediocrity and not necessarily what a product, brand or company stands for.

If blogs are the doyen of long tail social dialogue, then why is it their creators feel they need to satisfy short-tail philosophies to make sure they are accepted?

I think there is a danger of getting wires crossed here.

Physical products (and real-world businesses for that matter) live in a short-tail world and need all the help they can if they are to exceed their pre-set Key Performance Indicators. That’s why Shel’s call for public approval, and indeed Dell’s attempt to engender public input are such great ideas. 

Blogs, however, live in an entirely different medium. Sure, Technorati has its own Top 10, but this is principally about frequency, not authority. So asking the public how a blog should be isn’t so much helping a blog’s rankings as an attempt to make it an instant, popular hit rather than building it and shaping its inherent values over time.

I think companies should do everything in their power to ensure that their soul is the driving force behind projects as niche-rich as blogs, and champion this above anything else from the outset, no matter what happens.

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A busy month

Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on January 27th, 2007
Tagged as: Acer, Acer Blog, Edelman, Vista

This has been an eventful month.

First Edelman woke everyone up with a carefully/badly planned media campaign for Vista and shortly afterwards word got out that my client’s operating systems were compromised by a badly-coded ActiveX application.

It was fascinating to watch. A single post was quickly picked up by The Inquirer and from there the story literally exploded. By the end of the day it was on the front page of Slashdot and The Washington Post.

I lined all the cases up over on Alexa, and the sum totals of average daily page views of these sites exceeded one billion (TWP accountd for more than half).

At that point it hit mainstream media and country managers started asking for official responses.

It was a tough test of our PR skills as my client has no official blog and therefore very little way of reacting. It was also 11pm.

However, we got a press release up (fortunately they had a patch ready) the following day and got it noticed on the sites doing the most chatting and let nature take its course.

And the problem died.

It reminded me of an event in Scoble and Israel’s Naked Conversations when a bug surfaced on the blogosphere (if I’m not mistaken) during the development stage of XP. Scoble picked it up, they repaired it and silenced it within 9 hours.

We weren’t that fast but then, like I said, my client doesn’t have a blog. Yet.

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Time flies but then a LOT happens…

Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on December 22nd, 2006
Tagged as: Acer Blog, Dell, SEO

You ever get the idea that time flies straight past you?

That more or less has been the outcome of these last few weeks. Christmas is right there and I almost didn’t see it coming.

Before I go any further, I’d like to publicly thank the tech guys at Dell. My Workstation was well and truly KO. No safe-mode Windows trickery or system restore could pull it out of its frozen-screen hole.

After poking around for a few days, desperately trying to back up what I could (everything as it turns out), I made the call.

Actuall I made three. Each one took me to the next stagewith a level of professionalism and calmness that really struck me. Not because it was Dell, because it was so beyond what I’m used to from anyone it really stuck out.

So what do you think my opinion of Dell the company, it products and support services is after that? Hats off to them I say.

Right, with that off my chest it’s all-systems-go for some first hand SEO stuff this Christmas. First off TheAcerGuy is getting its own site. As much from the need for more space than a blog as to expeiment some SEO theories.

Then, my client’s own site. I had to force SEO on her as she knows someone high up in Google who assured her that the only way to stay at the top was to pay, heavily.

Sorry but that really irked me. I understand the need for Google to support its profitable business model but did they really have to go so far as to just plain lie??

So the challenge is on. First to prove to myself that it isn’t true (I already know that), and secondly to prove to my “boss” that her leg had been pulled so hard it should have hurt.

The other thing I have to do is set up an outline for an important corporate blog. It’s happening at last. First things forst, Wordpress or Moveable Type?

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