When I first heard about Twitter, I was horrified. Of all the weird and wonderful internet applications I’ve come across, this sounded like one of the more banal and pointless. But recently I’ve been forced to eat my words. I’m a convert. Here’s why…

What is Twitter?

If you’ve never heard of Twitter, this is the basic idea. You sign up for account at Twitter.com Whereupon you’re faced with the question What are you doing? and a box where you can type your answer in not more than 140 characters. When you’re done, hit the update button and your ‘Tweet’ (yes, they really call them that) is published on the Twitter site.

Each time you add a Tweet, it appears on the same page, which also has an RSS feed so people can sign up to ‘follow’ you. As an example, here’s my Twitter feed.

You can also ‘follow’ other people and have their Tweets delivered to you. Here’s the feed of people I’m following.

Why 140 characters? Because that’s the maximum number of characters in a standard text message on a mobile phone (or SMS message on a cellphone as I believe they are known over the pond). So not only can you follow people on the Twitter site, you can also send and receive Tweets on your mobile phone - i.e. you can be connected to Twitter anywhere with mobile phone reception.

Why on earth would you want to do any of that?

Good question. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to do it, so I didn’t, for ages. Even when people I respect were enthusing about it. Over a year ago I remember Russell teasing me about being behind the times, but as far as Twitter was concerned, I was happy to be a Luddite. It sounded like a combination of all the bad things about digital communication rolled into one, with none of the plus points.

Over the past year I’ve become increasingly mystified by the number of apparently sane and intelligent friends and acquaintances urging me to join them on Twitter. To the point where, like Facebook last year, I got the distinct impression that if I didn’t join in, I was missing out on something. Read the rest of this entry »

While we’re on the subject of the Age of Conversation, here’s the full list of authors of the upcoming Age of Conversation 2. If you look closely you’ll see I’m in there, very pleased to take my place in such a great lineup of bloggers and writers.

The overall title of the new book is Why Don’t They Get It? I’ll be writing my 400 words on the theme of The New Brand of Creative. I’m mulling it over right now - if you have any thoughts you’d like to share on that subject, I’d be grateful if you would leave a comment below.

Due to the word limit I doubt there will be room in the book to acknowledge commenters who stimulate my thinking about this topic, but if we get a good discussion going I’ll be happy to highlight the best contributions in a later post on this blog.

Authors of the Age of Conversation 2

Adam Crowe, Adrian Ho, Aki Spicer, Alex Henault, Amy Jussel, Andrew Odom, Andy Nulman, Andy Sernovitz, Andy Whitlock, Angela Maiers, Ann Handley, Anna Farmery, Armando Alves, Arun Rajagopal, Asi Sharabi, Becky Carroll, Becky McCray, Bernie Scheffler, Bill Gammell, Bob Carlton, Bob LeDrew, Brad Shorr, Bradley Spitzer, Brandon Murphy, Branislav Peric, Brent Dixon, Brett Macfarlane, Brian Reich, C.C. Chapman, Cam Beck, Casper Willer, Cathleen Rittereiser, Cathryn Hrudicka, Cedric Giorgi, Charles Sipe, Chris Kieff, Chris Cree, Chris Wilson, Christina Kerley (CK), C.B. Whittemore, Clay Parker Jones, Chris Brown, Colin McKay, Connie Bensen, Connie Reece, Cord Silverstein, Corentin Monot, Craig Wilson, Daniel Honigman, Dan Goldstein, Dan Schawbel, Dana VanDen Heuvel, Dan Sitter, Daria Radota Rasmussen, Darren Herman, Darryl Patterson, Dave Davison, Dave Origano, David Armano, David Bausola, David Berkowitz, David Brazeal, David Koopmans, David Meerman Scott, David Petherick, David Reich, David Weinfeld, David Zinger, Deanna Gernert, Deborah Brown, Dennis Price, Derrick Kwa, Dino Demopoulos, Doug Haslam, Doug Meacham, Doug Mitchell, Douglas Hanna, Douglas Karr, Drew McLellan, Duane Brown, Dustin Jacobsen, Dylan Viner, Ed Brenegar, Ed Cotton, Efrain Mendicuti, Ellen Weber, Emily Reed, Eric Peterson, Eric Nehrlich, Ernie Mosteller, Faris Yakob, Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s the day to get your copy of The Age of Conversation.

What?

The Age of Conversation is a book co-authored by over 100 of the world’s leading marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators. Each of them wrote 400 words on the theme of ‘conversation’. If the names David Armano, Roger von Oech, Tony D. Clark and Mark Earls ring any bells, you’ll have an idea of the standard of writing you can expect.

Why?

Not only is the book a cracking read, but all the profits go to help children’s charity Variety achieve its mission of improving the lives of children around the world.

Why today?

Because Today (Sat 29th March) is the day that Drew McLellan and Chris Wilson are orchestrating a campaign to drive sales and push The Age of Conversation up the Amazon bestseller charts. They’re doing this via blogs and social media services such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg and Stumbleupon.

What else can I do to help?

Very nice of you to ask. After you buy your copy of the book, go to Chris Wilson’s post and Digg it. Then have a read through his list of easy ways to help and do whichever ones you can.

What’s a bum rush?

I’ve no idea, but it’s for charity so let’s do it!

If you are responsible for getting the best out of a team of creative professionals, my new e-book on Creative Management for Creative Teams is for you. Feel free to download and share it (here are the terms of the Creative Commons licence).

The e-book is a compilation and revision of my blog series on business coaching.

Introduction to the E-book - Why Coaching?

As a creative director, business owner or manager of a creative team, the chances are you already coach your people to an extent - and you may be better at it than you realise. But there’s also a fair chance that you have received little support in developing your people management skills.

In the creative industries, so much attention is lavished on creative ‘talent’ and the products of creativity that vital aspects of the creative process are often overlooked. Such as the massive influence (positive and negative) managers and creative directors have on the creativity of their teams. While many individual managers are doing an excellent job of managing and developing their teams, there is little wider recognition of people management in the creative sector.

It’s hard to develop a skill that goes unrecognised. And you don’t need me to tell you that managing temperamental creatives can be one of the most challenging jobs going. Read the rest of this entry »

Image © Dave Gray, reproduced by kind permission

If creativity is your livelihood, is it a good idea to pursue multiple interests and develop a range of skills, or should you focus on one or two key talents and become the best around in your specialism?

I’m asking the question because two of my favourite blogs take completely opposite positions on this issue. In the red corner, Steve Hardy devotes his entire blog to the concept of the Creative Generalist, and recently wrote an excellent post about What Specifically Do Generalists Do?. In the blue corner, advertising copywriter Scamp has this to say about creative generalism:

the idea enrages me so much that every time it pops up I feel the need to reach for a hammer, like I’m playing a blogging version of whack-a-mole.

At the risk of getting whacked by Scamp’s hammer (and of mixing metaphors) I’m going to look at both sides of the question and see if I can referee the fight.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just created a new blog, Wishful Linking, to share links that may be useful and/or interesting to you as a creative professional. So if you’d like me to send you links to web pages about creativity, creative careers, managing creativity, intellectual property, creative industries, blogging, marketing, time management etc, then sign up for the RSS feed now. (If you’re wondering what that means, here’s an explanation of RSS.)

I’m hoping Wishful Linking will be a nice companion site for Wishful Thinking. My previous creative links posts have been well received, but I wanted something quicker and easier to update, so that you get more links more often. After playing around with a few options, I think Tumblr could be just the job.

Well, there it is. Hope you like it - let me know what you think.

Photo by ccarlstead

I’ve got something new to show you but it’s having teething technical problems so here’s a bit of Friday fun while we wait.

Sam has tagged me with the ‘Eight random things about me’ meme, so here goes…

1. I’m neither left-handed, right-handed nor ambidextrous. I can do some things left handed (writing, drawing) and some right handed (wield a sword or tennis racket, both badly) but I can’t swap over.

2. I’m half English, half Scottish and part Irish. Maybe that accounts for 1.

3. I’ve got married twice but never divorced. To the same person - once in England, once in Japan.

4. I speak conversational French, functional German, emergency Italian and novelty-value Japanese.

5. I have recently seen the light over Twitter. You can follow me here if you know what that means. If not, fear not - I’ll be blogging it properly soon.

6. I gave up reading novels after my English degree. Why read 300 pages when a decent poet will do the job in one?

7. According to a medium, I drowned on a 15th century warship. She was right about everything else, so why not that?

8. Once upon a time I nearly got to be a copywriter for Debenhams‘ lingerie department. Sometimes I wonder what I would have written.

Well, there it is.

Let’s see if Antonio, Beeker, Cat, John, John, Johnnie, Mark and Quentin want to play.

Photo by art_es_anna

I’ve added a Best of Wishful Thinking page to the left sidebar, to help you get at the ‘good stuff’ from my back catalogue. I’ve worked out what the good stuff is using a secret algorithm combining page views, comments, incoming links, Google page rank and the phases of the moon.

As a step towards decluttering my sidebars I’ve removed the monthly archives from the right sidebar and put them in a separate Wishful Thinking Archive, which you can find just under the categories on the right. I’m not sure how many of you will want to go back and read every single post on the blog, but maybe it’s nice to know you could if you wanted to.

So with the search box (also on the right) and the categories, hopefully you should be able to find your way around a bit more easily. Let me know if you can’t find anything you’re looking for.

Thanks to Skellie for her advice on creating an archive page.