Andy Hudson: Taking A New Idea To Market

Here’s a short video interview with Andy Hudson. I first met Andy in 1988 when I was doing work experience at a television production company. When I returned to the company in a full-time role in 1990 I worked with him on the music series ‘Friday At The Dome’ for Channel 4 and a number of other music and arts shows. We then worked together at his music events start-up Sol Entertainment and then at The Unique Broadcasting Company. Especially in the early part of my career Andy was a real mentor and encouraged me to think ‘plural’; that I could apply my skills to more than one area. It’s great to see how he’s reinvented himself from music and events to be founder of a technology business as he’s now COO of The Broadband Computer Company. The company has just launched ‘alex’, which offers safe, secure and easy computing especially for inexperienced users. I met Andy at the London launch last month and talked to him about how he’s developed the business from idea to market.

if the video does not display above, watch it on YouTube here

Appearing at South By South West '09

South By South West ('SXSW') is the annual interactive, film, and music festival/ conference in Austin, Texas where people get together to exchange ideas, to connect and showcase talent. The Wall Street Journal said:

“It's a place where new bands come to get discovered, stars seek to burnish their indie credentials, and executives come to share ideas”.

SXSW Interactive celebrates the best minds and the brightest personalities of emerging technology and the creative industries. This year, the organisers received more than 1,300 panel proposals for the 2009 Festival, but they only have the capacity to host around 200 of them.

My virtual friend Melissa Pierce submitted an idea for a session "Is the Planned Life Even Worth Living Anymore?" which has been selected as a ‘Core Conversation’ at the 2009 Festival. I am delighted to announce that Melissa has invited me to be her co-presenter for the session.

The belief that lives and businesses must be well planned into the future is crumbling as we continually adapt to new technologies and a global marketplace. The session will generate discussion around some themes as: Are the current business and educational systems obsolete? How one can personally adapt to the “new economy”? What’s hype, what’s real?

Happy 2009 and see you at SXSW!

The outlook for 2009, as defined by Twitterers

From The Guardian, Jemima Kiss collates feedback from the Twitter Community on what they are looking forward to for 2009 and how they think tech firms can best weather the downturn.

See the results here.

Make Your Business Personal!

I just saw a website of a great little company. A company with a good proposition and a decent website. It talked of the team of experts and professionals who handle their projects. But despite navigating through the site, there was no page mentioning key people, no team line-up, no management team biogs. Nothing. It was totally faceless. No names were mentioned in any context. Just a telephone number, address and generic email.

In any business especially a sector where there is lots of competition, being distinctive is about communicating the strength of your team. And that means, don’t hide them away! Name them, tell the world their role in the organisation, link to their blogs, their biogs, even their Twitter page. What’s the point in proclaiming they are experts if you won’t even name them and their roles, let alone tell the marketplace what they have done?

This is where small business has an advantage over big business. Big business sometimes can be faceless, with huge corporations, multi departments and offices around the world. But if you are a business of just ten partners, each of you really contributes to the DNA of the business and those personalities are part of your offering.

So don’t dilute that personality, shout about it!

Blogging Vs Tweeting

In last week's New York Times there was a piece about a new movement in blogging: 'slow blogging'. The article featured blogger Barbara Ganley who uses her blog for slow, more contemplative reflections. She suggests that whilst Twitter is a tool that cab be used to connect with people; blogs are a tool to reflect. I agree with some of that but the joy of the blogging platform is you can make it what you will. If you want to post daily or just monthly, that is fine. But for me, a blog post is about being rapid rather than slow. (As you can probably tell) my blog posts are not carefully drafted pieces of writing - that's what my books are for. Instead my blog posts are rapid brain dumps of what has inspired me. And there are no rules.

Why did I recently go 10 days without posting? I got busy.
Why did I just post a photograph up last week with no caption or explanation? I felt like it.

So if blogging can be rapid, tweeting is super-rapid; signposting a website or just a random thought on where you are at. Again I only tend to tweet once a day – that’s because I don’t have the time (nor the inclination) to be doing much more than that. But I see evidence that many others on Twitter are tweeting twenty times a day; they are using the platform to have real conversations.

The bottom line is that the joy of these platforms is they are different; they have different audiences and different dynamics. I love the simplicity and rigidity of Twitter and the flexibility of a blog post. And whether you blog or tweet daily or monthly; whether you are slow or quick, you can do whatever you fancy.

They are the tools to communicate your personal brand; so whatever you do - use them!