…Leave to Brew

I’m a bit depressed (but not entirely surprised) by the reaction of many commentators to Rio de Janeiro winning the bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. Was it really a rebuff, or a humiliating defeat for the US? Hardly. Somebody else was chosen instead, is all.

I think this points to what some who talk of American global leadership really mean. Leadership for them means first in the pecking order. If anyone else wins, America looses.

Not much Olympic spirit here.

To keep any business running, there is constant pressure to chase the next project and the next invoice. If we’re not careful, this can cause quality and creativity to take a nosedive as making the money becomes the over-riding priority.

I’ve been running my own web design business for a couple of years now. I think the tough reality is that you’ve got to work hard to keep the money flowing. This is how one survives. The times I’ve gotten behind on invoicing are the months I’ve nearly folded. It’s no different for larger agencies. They may or may not have healthier cash-flows, but the pressure to keep solvent and keep chasing the next job is just as great, if not greater.

On the other hand I don’t think that needing to churn over lots of work and get paid promptly means agencies need to throw quality, creativity and promises out of the window. Where that happens, I think they have a dodgy business model. Poor quality work is going to cost somebody sooner or later. It’ll hit their client first, but ultimately it’s going to damage the agency too.

I’ve been finding that many of my clients want very similar core things. So my business model is evolving to be two-fold:

1. Develop some “packaged” products and my own frameworks where the quality is already established. Use these for the bulk of clients who want common systems.
2. Accept entirely bespoke projects, but ensure I get a good price for them and adopt excellent project management processes to ensure all the promises can be met and exceeded.

I’m not yet an expert in this way of working. My frameworks aren’t yet as flexible as they could be, and I don’t always budget high enough for the very bespoke stuff (I tend to pay for this mistake by working longer hours rather than ditching quality, but it’s still not a great situation). But as I get closer to the ideal, it feels like it’s got to be the right approach.

Evidence that the majority of people don’t know what a browser is, and assume their browser application and the internet and Google are all kind of the same thing…

Part of me thinks that this is a worrying lack of knowledge. Not that I think everyone needs to be a computer expert, but if the majority of people knew this little about the car they drive, wouldn’t we be nervous?

As a computery person myself, I suppose I should be rubbing my hands together in glee at the rarity (and therefore value) of my knowledge. But instead I find myself wondering why so many people know so little about the technology that’s either changing their lives or leaving them behind. Is it good that people don’t appear to need to know stuff like this? And good for whom?

This sounds really encouraging. I imagine the looming recession could provide strong motivation for corporations to try out such crazy new ways of working.

But, while I’m trying really hard not to be cynical, I think this video doesn’t address the way patents seem entirely damaging to collaboration. If patents started to get used for the purpose they were intended—which was to encourage sharing of private ideas—then all could be well. But right now, patents are the strongest form of protectionism and are used to block innovation.

Also, I think that corporations will have to fundamentally change for this to work. Until the current collapse of the western economic model, most corporations were led by shareholders with frenzied greed. This is antithetical to the open, collaborative exchange of ideas. Nike can’t have their cake and eat it. Most of the smart people do work for other organisations, but you can’t tap into their talent unless you care as much for them as you do for yourself. And I mean care for them. Not simply care about their wallet.

Had to post this.

Radio 4’s Today programme just hosted a discussion between Dr Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science and Nas Amir Ahmadi, managing director of Detox in a Box. Dr Goldacre’s point was that Detox programmes are shallow marketing and have no measurable effect on health. He went further to say that they may actually dis-empower people by encouraging a lot of effort and spending a lot of money which has no effect. Anyway, he cited a line on Detox in a Box’s website which claims their product is effective at helping the body reduce levels of “heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadminum [sic.], nickel, arsenic, and aluminum” and asked Nas Amir Ahmadi to cite evidence that her product reduced cadmium. Ahmadi replied by saying that Goldacre must have been looking at the wrong website because those things were not mentioned on hers.

Enter Google to the fray, and the search phrase ‘“detox in a box” heavy metals’, which highlight a page from Detox in a Box’s website containing exactly what Dr Goldacre said it did:

“One of the most complex detoxification functions is against heavy metals such as lead, mercury, cadminum, nickel, arsenic, and aluminum.”

I imagine the company may revise this page in a hurry after the interview, so I took a composite screenshot of the entire page for posterity. Aren’t I the helpful sort?