I’m having a short story published in this anthology, from the excellent editorial entrepreneurial folk responsible for Pandemonium Fiction  and Pornokitsch.

Smoke is an anthology searching for new stories pushing out fantastical children that are considered the children of Dickens, in honour of Dickens’ 200^th birthday.

There are (will be) 100 hardcovers available, all signed & numbered – though they’re nearly out of them, so order quick-like if you’re interested. Their original Pandemonium: Stories of the Apocalypse is still in ebook/print form, for a little while. One of the best short story collections I’ve read in a long time.

And I’ve got a story in it. With an awfully long list of very clever and talented authors too cool to name. If you come to next week’s launch party, you’ll get to see me all tongue tied and star-struck. Or perhaps just slightly drunk and shouty. Hopefully in a nice sort of way.

But here’s the thing. See the photo up there? That’s the illustration of my story. You can see the rest here and there’s a way to purchase 5 of them. Just don’t bid on the one above, as it’s MINE MINE MINE.

Or, else, I hope it is. It’s lovely and gorgeous and by Gary Northfield and I like it and I’d like to buy it. For charity, you understand.  Though I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford it, but the proceeds of all six sales will go to support English PEN. So bid big. Just not on the St-Dunstan-in-the-East.

Buy all the copies of the book you like, though, from Amazon USA or Amazon UK.

 

Well, I’m back.

Sorry for the long times between updates, but things’ve been mad and blogging has been… less of a priority.

My life isn’t fair

I’ve been very lucky in my role with Social Innovation Camp which has in the past year or so, taken me to five countries on two continents, with an occasional trip to the USA.

Currently I’m in Nairobi, Kenya working on the British Council’s Culture Shift. I’ve been in Johannesburg, South Africa and Lagos, Nigeria recently for the same series of events, all of which are rather exciting, if exhausting.  Photos are on Facebook here.

The talent in these four countries – from design, to development, to business, to creativity- is consistently stunning. Loads of people are concerned about the developing world taking employment from the developed world – I keep thinking the concern should be as to the relevance.

I’ve also become a twitter addict, here.

Looking forward

Clare will be finishing her master’s soon, and moving to London, ending just about 2 years of separate living – we’re both thrilled and stubbornly clinging to our own independence.

I’ve got several trips planned – Aberdeen, for the Brew Dog AGM with my excellent friend James. I’ll be in Egypt in May the final Culture Shift event (for which I am thrilled), followed by having one of my closest ever friends ever come visit for three weeks, putting up with Brixton at night while researching at Kew during the day. There may be a New York trip in mid-May, and I’m unfortunately not going to Kosovo.

During all of this, I’ll be trying to work out exactly what & where the next Social Innovation Camp will be.

And there’s a book launch coming up, featuring a short story by me, about choice. More about that later, but if you’re around London on 4^th April, try to come along to the opening.

Of all the things that amaze me about Burning Man, the thing I’ve always found the most amazing is the breadth and variety of people—where else could you sit around talking about art and culture with a socialist doctor, a libertarian stripper, an atheist with a Master’s in Divinity from Harvard, aid workers who crosses dangerous borders for a living, and a saxophone-playing software developer with a pilot’s license from Britain?

(n.b. – these are all people I’ve met at, or via, the Event)

The Backstory

The backstory of all this is, I got given a pair of tickets to Burning Man this year. This became a very valuable gift very suddenly as tickets, for the first time ever, sold out. Most of the people I knew either had their tickets or knew that they should have taken care of it early-like.

So I decided to give them away, posting on my blog (and twittering it out to the world), sending emails out to the Playadust & London’s Burning lists, and posting on my Evil Social network profile. I think that the twit-posting also probably went out to my SchnooglePlus and SchnoogleBuzz and some other places of lower relevance.

The Response

In about a week, I got 20 responses, ranging from “I’ve not got a good reason but really want to go”, to deeply personal and moving stories of their time on the playa, to a desire to share with other friends. I even had several people apply on behalf of other folk in their camp who they knew wouldn’t ask but could really use the help.

So then I had a pretty unenviable choice. I’m not going to name names here, but what I thought I’d use as (completely arbitrary, but hey, they’re my tickets) criteria were:

• How much of an impact would my ticket make to the Cool Thing?
• How much of an impact would their Cool Thing make?
• Was it going to multiply the experience – either making it deeper or reach a wide range of people?

The Winners

The 2 people who get my gift tickets are:

-          A pilot, who’s going to work with the Temple team and give airplane rides. The Temple team had apparently gotten an airplane, but no pilot. Flying around Burning Man has always been a dream of mine—I won’t get to, but someone will (note: I do hope that they get BMFlight virgins)

-          Someone who is going to use the cash saved to cook an EXTRA 500 meals for the early-arriving hardworking artists who build their stuff out there on-Playa. I’ve been out early, and some of these guys are here for a month ahead of time. A hot meal at the end of the day? Beats a Tasty Bite any day.

Congrats to the 2 winners. I wish I had another fair few tickets to give away. Best of luck to everyone going (or trying to get tickets).

Participate. Leave no trace. Be nice. Give people stuff.

On Purpose has just opened its new Call for Associates

On Purpose is run by a very clever group of people, and they help people migrate into the Social Enterprise space. I wish this programme had existed for me 5 years ago, as I’d have jumped on the chance (not that I wish I did things differently!)

 

They’ve just opened applications for their 12 month intensive programme that helps high-calibre professionals kick-start a career in social enterprise. You get two paid 6-month social enterprise placements, coupled to intensive 1:1 support and world-class training provided by professionals from organisations such as McKinsey, Bain, IDEO, the Big Issue, UnLtd and Venturesome.

 

They are looking for professionals with a track record of achievement and two or more years’ work experience. To apply, please go fill in our online application form that you can access here.

 

Questions? Ask on Facebook

 

Deets:

Application deadline: Wednesday 24 August 2011

Salary: £20,000 pro rata

Start date: mid January (if specific date necessary, use 16 January) 2012

End date:  December 2012

Full time

Contact email: recruitment@onpurpose.uk.com

Interview dates: (first round): first 2 weeks of September

 

The People Speak bring out “Who wants to be?”

The lovely people behind Social Innovation Camp’s excellent videos (2 3 4) run their own programmes. The People Speak bring as many people as possible into a theatre who pay £5.00 each (the new recession friendly price!) They then spend the evening deciding and voting on how to spend the entire box office takings as a collective. At the last few games, audience members have proposed to gamble the money online, commission a democracy bench for an East London park and to turf the streets of Cardiff.

The audience is in control of the game – they can vote on to spend the money, change the rules of the game and even sack the host.  Please find attached our press release for further information.  You can also see a previous game in action here: http://vimeo.com/4074853

Details:

Who Wants to Be?

Part of Adhocracy, 6 August 2011, 8:00 – 10:00pm

Bar  area, Rich Mix, 35 – 47 Bethnal Green Road, London, E1 6LA

Admission: £5.00

Tickets: http://adhocracy.info/booktickets

More info: http://www.whowantstobe.co.uk

 

Hello all you patient-to-the-world people.

Yep, I’ve still been kind of crazy busy.

What have I been doing? Managing & running Social Innovation Camp in Edinburgh and helping build teams to develop these six ideas.

All the ideas seem to be moving forward—but I’ll have more details about that in a couple of weeks. There are a few that I think will really help out people.

I also made a visit out to San Francisco and New York, and didn’t get to see enough of you, despite trying to drink all the American microbrews that exist.

Burning Man ticket

I have 2 tickets to this year’s Burn that were given to me. I’m going to give them away. Why? ‘cos you’re going to do something extra-cool on the Playa this year. What are you going to do? You tell me. Coolest thing gets the ticket. In a pair or individually.

(n.b. – “I’ll get to go ‘cos I can’t afford it otherwise” doesn’t count.)

Email glen_mehn@yahoo.com with what cool-arse thing you’re gonna do.

That’s all for now.

As a part of my job running the Social Innovation Camp, I’ve been going up and back to Scotland, meeting people, drinking approximately 600 cups of coffee a day (it seems, at times), and getting people to submit ideas for our upcoming Camp in Edinburgh.

I made it to Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness, and Edinburgh. Some of those places more than once.

By the numbers:

-          Weeks of Call for Ideas: 8

-          Weeks spent traveling: 7

-          Days spent in Scotland: 15

-          Longest consecutive days at home: 4

-          Pre-6:30 AM mornings: 6

-          Public sector bodies contacted: 14

-          Workshops run: 14

-          Largest attendance: 28 (Glasgow)

-          Smallest attendance: 2 (Inverness)

-          Meetings missed: 1

-          Judges found: 5

-          Best meal: The Mustard Seed, Inverness

-          Worst meal: The Ramada Encore, Inverness

-          Shortest trip: Inverness (25 hours on the ground)

-          Latest train: East Coast, Edinburgh->London (~3 hours)

-          Loudest train: ScotRail Aberdeen->Edinburgh (stag do)

-          Best breakfast: Edinburgh (http://www.edinburghfirst.org.uk )

-          Number of haggis for breakfast: 6

 

Best use of odd bits of a building: Hootenanny in Inverness:

Best signage fail: On the street in Glasgow:

That best breakfast in Edinburgh:

The still-lit sky, 10:30PM in Inverness in May:

Student humour in Glasgow: That’s James Watt with a cone on his head.

Difficulty in opportunity | Opportunity in difficulty
There’s an old adage that the skeptic sees difficulty in every opportunity, while the entrepreneurs sees opportunity in every difficulty. Think about it. Imagine it’s 1998. Search sucks. Yahoo’s your best bet. Banner ads and the blink tag run rampant across the Internet. Pets.com has just closed its Series A. Portals are all the rage. What’s a smart entrepreneur to do?

Launch a site based on search, keywords, and no banner ads.

OK, sure, zag when they zig
The thing is, you might go for it. Get off your lazy bum and stop scribbling on beer mats and start up your company. Optimism is what you need. Frameworks. Business models. Adaptability. Entrepreneurial mindset. Zagging vs. zigging. Optimism.

Optimism is great, critical, important. But it’s not just what you need.

Healthy skepticism
This is your ability to look at yourself, your business, your product, with the outside perspective of the skeptic, and see it clearly. Then to turn to the market and proceed with healthy optimism. It’s the difference between blind faith and reasonable optimism. Cultivate it. Then proceed forward as though you’ve already succeeded.

Hi both of you who are still reading this, since I apparently let aaaaages pass without an update.

Current status: I’ve stopped consulting… and have a job
I’ve been working the past few months with the lovely and talented team at Social Innovation Camp around growing the business that they’ve started and bootstrapped over the past three years. A few things we’ve worked on together have come together, so I’m joining as a full-time member of the team.

Which is, actually, pretty bloody awesome. What’s SICamp? It is:

A Launchpad for tech-based social ventures

An accellerator for tech-based social ventures which are sligthly further along

An innovation consultancy around technology and innovation for the social enterprise, public, and third sector

A trainer and enabler of global launchpads & accellerators

This is pretty much what I’d do if I had £20M in the bank and didn’t have to work. So that’s not so bad.

Cross-posting with SICamp stuff
I’ll be writing, hopefully much more often, for SICamp’s blog and most likely cross-posting here, on things like entrepreneurship, social enterprise, innovation, and musings and findings of each. I look forward to getting back into the swing of writing again… In fact, I feel a musing coming on.

There’s

(Sorry for being not around—I’ve been very busy with several interesting—but unfortunately confidential—projects. I can say, though, that I’ve been investigating strategies for exploring new business opportunities in developing countries rather a lot)

Those of you who know me know me on my bike. I’ve had nice ones, crappy ones, and funky ones. It’s my default mode of transportation, particularly if you have nice employers who provide a shower and/or a locker for your suits (or who put up with you be hot & sweaty in the morning).

Sure, I get wet sometimes. I get sweaty. Sometimes I get shouted at, occasionally I have to cycle home after dark without lights (if I’ve forgotten mine) but overall it’s a pretty good way to get around, particularly if you live in London.

Some drivers who listen to too much Jeremy Clarkson can be rude, but overall London’s a pretty great place to cycle.

Then, occasionally, you get the nasty HGV drivers.

Now, I’m an assertive cyclist. I was hit by a car in about 1996, and am pretty careful these days.

I don’t pass on the inside coming up to lights. I (OK, generally) don’t jump lights (certainly never if there’s anything coming at all). I treat my bicycle as though it’s deadly to humans, and treat anything bigger than me as a big lump of stone.

I’ve occasionally shouted at drivers who have over taken too closely or nearly run me down, but at the end of the day, I figure it’s my job as a small, fragile thing to be visible.

So I do get very cross when a cement truck overtakes in a short narrow lane on a busy highway. But I’ve pretty much stopped shouting. I (hope) I can just get even. And maybe make a bit of difference.

The ubiquitous camera phone is the great equaliser here. I snapped the plate and the driver’s logo,

and then spent two minutes navigating the phone tree at hanson.biz to see if I couldn’t get in touch with a transportation supervisor. Voila! Not too difficult.

Let’s see if we can’t get Hanson.biz to sign up for Cycle Awareness Training or perhaps at least the No Lethal Lorries campaign.

Perhaps even a google-mappy-mashup a la Fix My Street is in order, where we route complaints and publish the results.

Jo from Hanson, I’m waiting for your response.

I got sent this article from the New York Times today. It was short, to the point, and completely missed the point, perhaps.

What do you want to measure?
Sure, of course, you want to know how much online buzz equates to rankings, but what does that really tell you of true value? I don’t think that your advertisers (who pay for all those shows) really care about the number of eyeballs watching your show (whether real or on your PVR).

What they care about is people buying their stuff. This is what google figured out so well ten years ago.

What they care about is showing the right ads to the right people. Like P&G and Unilever sponsoring soap operas back in the 50s.

Market fragmentation
We’ve hit this point where everyone’s got 50+ channels of TV to watch. On top of that, they’ve got 4OD, IPlayer, Hulu, and others. People aren’t watching TV the same way. Media and advertising companies need to pay more attention to the engagement they can have with smaller, stronger audiences rather than beaming out to loads of eyeballs.

Landscape changes
Advertising’s gotta change, and I think it’s a bigger change than using the product placement ideas stuck into this article. The iPad, the web, smartphones, films, and Television create an ecosystem in which you can engage with people and build brands that last.

Go do it.

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