Tales of travel in terrible taverns

It’s been quite a while since I updated this and that’s due to the time I’ve been spending travelling. Virtually all of it in Scotland. When I was writing this, Celtic were just about to play Hibs. After Rangers’ amazing battering of Hamilton Academicals the previous day, there’s no danger of them making their ways past the mighty Hoops, but nevertheless, the Celtic match is an important match.
So – seeing as Glasgow is a city when football is in the blood of just about everyone here – you’d expect that the airport’s pubs/cafes would make this game available to customers rather than the English-centric Sky Sports. Alas, no. Wetherspoons – that often maligned cheap pub – chooses to pay Sky for dated Sky Sports news, rather than have the more local Setanta channel. Seeing as I counted around ten people asking at the bar whether the football was on, you’d think they’d take the hint. Unfortunately not.

Those Hoop fans that read this will be glad to know I intend to write to Wetherspoons’ esteemed CEO Tim Martin to ask that this be remedied, or at least explained.

My travelling has come about because I’m involved in a fairly exciting new venture. A digital startup, it’s got a feelgood factor and it’s nice to be doing something that’s not mercenary. When I can, I'll reveal more. Let's just say it'll be the biggest media startup in the UK for 2009.

One of the biggest news stories I’ve found while I’ve been back in my homeland is The Herald & Times Group’s astonishing decision to make all its 240 staff redundant.
While I understand the reasoning behind it, morally it’s wrong. D
onald Martin, the new editor-in-chief who’s got the job of doing this redundancy exercise, is a friend of mine and despite the negative press reports of him, he’s in charge of cutting costs and that’s not a pleasant task.
Scottish media needs to change. Not just Scottish media, but media in general. If you’re reading this, then you’re digitally savvy as most people are. While there’s a place for offline media, when the majority of your audience is getting its information offline, you need to adjust or die. Unfortunately – as The Herald said succinctly in its statement – there are a lot of people (journalists and sales staff alike) at The Herald who have yet to adjust to the digital times. I don’t think the mass redundancy route is the right one, but it enables Gannet – which owns the papers – to break the contracts of the senior staff, many of which will have been drafted in more reasonable times with more reasonable benefits.
Will those benefits be reinstated when the applicant is accepted for a new job? I doubt it.

social media mutterings

Well had a chilled weekend, mainly reading John Leslie's continued insistence that he's not a rapist, despite saying 'he didn't actually phsyically do anything wrong'. Hmmm.
Aside from that I played with this . How many do you remember?
I failed to do any of the chores I had planned to do, mainly due to getting domestic chores done, but I have an hour this evening to do it.
This week's going to be pretty busy, in the run up to my birthday on Friday. I'm wondering how many 'virtual' presents I'll be getting!
That said, as I'm out nearly every night with people I expect I'll have a good haul.

Interesting observations on social media here By looking at the data, it seems there are more women using social media than men, which could be true given we are more likely to chat. I'm not convinced by the age ranges. I am sceptical that there are so many 69 year olds on social media sites, more likely that when people sign up, they omit their age and it opts for the standard. That said, it shows the medium is growing up.

Finally

Well after a week of no laptop, I'm now able to update my blog. I've finished working for Mobile Business, too much for too little money, so they've now found a new editor, which is great.
My business plans are coming along too, should be meeting people this week. Quite exciting and scary too.
Went to the NMA Awards on the 26th June. Interesting array of winners. Good to see that Argos is finally getting recognition for its digital work. Although, I do think they need to ensure that the dedication to digital filters down to the minions. Last time I spoke to a PR person at Argos, they told me digital wasn't a priority for them. Interesting when you think how the experience of ordering on the web, picking up in store and paying at a quick terminal is so much more palatable than standing with the chavs. If only they could understand how important they're going to be in the new trying 'credit crunch' days.

Have had a bit of a debauched weekend, not with the romantic interest mentioned last month, but with a new one. Considering I spent all weekend with him, and I didn't want to kill him, we could be in trouble. He does however keep demanding I visit him in the achingly trendy Shoreditch. Not entirely sure that'll be happening regularly. Even better though, he's a geek so at least when I start talking about SEO and social integration and web2.0, he won't doze off out of ignorance. Boredom, maybe, ignorance though, not.
Need to get my head together as I've two features to write on SEO. Better dust off my 'How to get to the top on Google' manual. Have also been reading Groundswell, about the importance of social media. Given that comments on Facebook are falling, should be quite interesting. Have been watching with interest the rise of things like Dopplr and Twitter. The exhaustingly digital Paul Walsh seems to spend 24 hours a day updating his feed, frankly my life's too dull for that. Pleased to be back online. Amazing how much you get done, though, when the constant chirping of incoming mail isn't there. I've reorganised my office, fed my fish and managed to make a jelly. I'm having a breakdown clearly.
I'm still surprised at the ruling against YouTube re; Viacom's case against them. Quite how YouTube is going to offer up all the users' details without someone mounting an action against them. I would have thought someone would pull the Human Rights card. Yet to be seen.