A Huge Global Event...Going Local

I think the 2012 Olympics is great news for London so I was delighted to hear news this week that my local beauty spot Hadleigh Castle is going to be the venue for the mountain biking. Hadleigh Castle is 700 years old and has a stunning vista on top of a hill overlooking the Thames Estuary.

It’s great to have the Olympics on our door step and a great feeling when such a huge global event like the Olympics touches you locally.

See the press release here.

Don’t Forget Local

Whatever the merits of doing business online, huge global brands, trading globally, outsourcing, blah blah don’t forget the importance of ‘Local’.


Here’s our local fish-shop, where we bought Saturday night’s dinner. A fish merchants that has stayed the same for decades. It sells fish. No frills, no gimmicks. A huge central table full of fish. An aisle to the left to enter, an aisle to the right to leave.

Survival in business is sometimes about change; but here's a retail business that will hopefully survive without having too change too much.

'What's Juggle All About?'

Here's a short video about the new book ...

'Pioneering Spirit'

Here are some stills from last week's shoot of the 'Pioneering Spirit' videos for Courvoisier The Future 500.

Pic #1 I am interviewing Ian Burrell, restauranteur and rum guru; #2 is Sam Bompas, architectural foodsmith and Jelly Genius; #3 is technology expert David Prior ; and #4 Jennifer Williams-Bafoe, consultant to the fashion industry (with apologies to Neil Fairbrother - no stills available).

The videos are currently in post-production.

* Thanks to Amy Osborne for the photos

Introducing Chris Gould

Back in the ‘90s Chris Gould worked for me. Chris was a talented radio engineer who became a technical project manager. Then one day he started talking about new media and data and moved to work in digital radio.

Chris now heads up his own company All In Media and I’m proud to count Chris as one of my clients. The business is still young but already had successes in the UK, Ireland and Australia. Yesterday’s Business section of ‘The Telegraph’ profiled Chris and his business.

Read Chris’s story of why he took the leap to work for himself and what his business has achieved here.

picture copyright The Telegraph

My New Book Title

There are no tropical rainforests in my new book.
There are no swamps.
No tangled undergrowth.
No exotic birds or apes swinging from the trees.

So I had to laugh when I saw the listing for the new book on Amazon.com

They have it down as ‘Jungle!’

!!!

Introducing Gary Vaynerchuk…

For my next book, I have assembled a virtual panel of 'Jugglers'; people who have achieved success by being multi-dimensional. One of those is New Jersey-based wine guru and internet celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary runs his own wine business, presents a daily videoblog to 80,000 fans and commentates on new media and social networking. I am conducting email – and video – interviews with these Jugglers and their experiences and feedback will be used in the book.

There's an interview with Gary, 'The Wine World's New Superstar' in yesterday’s 'Independent'.

Check it out, he's going to be BIG, and I'm chuffed he's featuring in my new book.