Pain no gain

Pain
Originally uploaded by kevin ferry

Just returned from the Balmoral Burn - that is such a hard run - 420m straight up sprint on a very very steep hill on Awaba Street in Balmoral.

Got second again got nailed by the same guy last year - we both were way ahead of the field, but I had nothing in the tank when I needed to kick.

The fittest guy won on the day, well done today but we will return for other encounter.

Chin chin

Consumer engagement - love it

Busy tweeting for your business

There's an on going debate about how much businesses should be using social media channels like Twitter to promote themselves, well if your thinking like this, then stop! You're already in the wrong mindset- the fact you want to 'promote' your company is the wrong tack, instead think of your company sharing knowledge and advice around your profession and that might not all involve around your company on that I picked this up early this morning via Chris Brogan this is all your business needs to know about using social media in particular Twitter, my personal opinion on using Twitter for business is it's vital, without it you can't reach out to your customers in an engaging manner, it's also a valuable channel as a source of research, so here's the first steps in building your business further:

First Steps

1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
2. Add a picture. ( Shel reminds us of this.) We want to see you.
3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. I know this doesn’t sell more widgets, but it shows us you’re human.
4. Point out interesting things in your space, not just about you.
5. Share links to neat things in your community. ( @wholefoods does this well).
6. Don’t get stuck in the apology loop. Be helpful instead. ( @jetblue gives travel tips.)
7. Be wary of always pimping your stuff. Your fans will love it. Others will tune out.
8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories. ( @TheHomeDepot does it well.)
9. Throw in a few humans, like RichardAtDELL, LionelAtDELL, etc.
10. Talk about non-business, too, like @astrout

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

11. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
12. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
13. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
14. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
15. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who she follows, and follow her.
16. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
17. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
18. Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
19. Don’t toot your own horn too much.
20. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the others, too.

BBC you have my vote

As most of you will know there was a general election in the UK, now with me all the way over in the 'lucky country' tracking and seeing the votes unfold where else would you go apart from the BBC? As someone who loves data and is very visual this site was a organismic visual and data trip.Just by tapping in your district you get detail from a interactive map, with live streams of the results, with comments from in and out going MP's and all the results in real time with the colour map changing just as fast as the results were coming in. I spent an age pouring over the results, here's my area I lived when I was in the UK of Romford in Essex

This site had everything, the debates,and I particular liked the section called 'make it clear' so for instance when it was announced that it was heading for a hung parliament they had a full chart explaining what will happen and the next steps that will follow, wonderful.

But it was the BBC TV Channel that made the whole experience informative and entertaining the live stream was fast without buffering and they kept changing from one programme to the other without a single judder, for one moment I could be sitting in front of the TV with a beer in hand in sunny old Romford instead of cold wintery Sydney Australia. (It's winter here).

So I thank you the BBC and that's why you'll always get my vote.

Share the love of music

Came across this, a music site called We Are Hunted a online music chart.

They listen to what people are saying about artists and their music on blogs, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, message boards and forums, Twitter and P2P networks to chart the top songs online everyday, neat idea pop pickers almost
a new Top of the Pops.
In the physical world, charts are built on shipped albums. Online charts have been a simple count of digital downloads. This New Model Army is different. They discover new music from around the web and detect sentiment, expression and advocacy to understand what people like and dislike. They also have the ability to buy the track you've played from the site, good business model.