Photo by LittleMissSilly

I’m on a panel next Thursday 1st May, at All Together Now – Social Media and the Future of Community Sport, a joint Sport England and Channel 4 event at the Channel 4 building.

This is what it’s about:

Over the course of the past three years the emergence of blogging, social networking services and platforms which showcase and share user generated content have transformed the possibilities of how we connect, converse and collaborate with one another.

’In the 20th Century, we were defined by what we owned, in the 21st Century we will be defined by what share and give away’ Charles Leadbeater, author of We Think

The potential for organisations and brands to harness these technologies and tools to engage with users, customers and their communities in radically new ways is becoming clear.

How can all those organisations working to promote active participation in sports and the brands that wish to sponsor their activates and campaigns work together to make the most of the unrivalled viral power and network effects of the web in the run up to 2012?

Other speakers will include Thomas Godfrey, Commercial Director of Sport England, Jon Gisby, Director of Technology and New Media at Channel 4, Rebecca Caroe, Gi Fernando of Technlightenment, Antony Mayfield and Ed Mitchell.

I’ll be there as an ambassador for social media, to share my experience of blogging, social networking, Twitter, etc. and give the representatives of sports organisations some idea of the possibilities and pitfalls of engaging with people via the web.

After receiving the invitation I was struck by two thoughts: 1. How much time I spend on football messageboards when I should probably be doing something else, and following on from that, 2. that sport may be the ultimate social object [WARNING: cartoon with rude word] i.e. conversation starter and social catalyst. If I meet a stranger and they let slip they’re interested in football, I know we’ll have plenty to talk about and there will be no awkward silences (well not unless they turn out to be a Rangers fan).

So it looks to me as though sports organisations have an open goal in front of them – they have something that most people love to talk about and nearly anyone has an opinion on. But will they slot the ball calmly home or sky it over the bar? Or will they be fatally distracted by the animated advertising board behind the goal?

There are still a few free tickets left, so if you’re interested in any combination of social media, sport and marketing, then register for the event, ask me some easy questions during the debate, and come and say hello afterwards.

If you can’t make it on the day but you’ve got any thoughts on how sports or other organisations should engage with people via social marketing, please leave a comment below. I don’t think I’ll be able to link to you from the stage but I’ll certainly Twitter my thanks if I use any ideas from the comments.

Thanks to Steve Moore of Policy Unplugged for inviting me to join the panel and giving me an excuse to post a photo of Celtic.

EDIT: I’ve posted my presentation slides to Slideshare. You can probably tell I was trying to keep things as simple as possible.

Photo by -bast-

Fellow coach Ed Batista has published a three-question interview with me. I always think you can tell good coaches by the questions they ask, and Ed’s questions prompted me to reflect on my work and explain some things I hadn’t consciously thought about before – thanks Ed!

As well as enquiring about my work and use of technology, Ed held me to account by asking how my New Year’s Resolution is going – if you want to find out whether I’ve kept it, you’d better head over to Ed’s blog.

PS – If you were following my Twitter feed you’d have heard about this interview last week, as well as the Jill Bolte-Tayor video and free tickets for Charles Leadbeater’s talk about creativity and the internet. On the other hand, you’d also have heard about me watching football on TV and using the wrong end of my Wacom pen, so I guess it all evens out.

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.

So I gave it a go, and discovered I was wrong about Twitter. It’s amazing. Much more exciting than we thought Facebook was going to be. And even harder to explain to people who haven’t tried it. But I’ll have a go.

To explain why I was wrong, I’ll list each of my objections to the idea of Twitter and in each case give my actual experience of Twitter as a counter-example.

1. What’s the point?

This was the first hurdle. Why would anyone want to know what I’m doing right now? To be frank, my life isn’t exactly an action adventure. I can’t imagine anyone being interested in the mundane details of what I have for breakfast or which supermarket I shop in. Maybe if I were David Bowie or Seamus Heaney, but even then the novelty would probably wear off pretty soon. After months of trying to persuade people that blogs can be more than narcissistic online diaries, why would I want to start writing one in bite-sized chunks?

I was wrong about this in two ways. Firstly, the ‘What are you doing?’ question is a bit of a red herring. Lots of people don’t answer it. Instead they post thoughts, questions, links and replies to other Twitter users. That’s right – people reply to each other’s Tweets. Then they reply to the replies – put the Tweets together, join the dots and you discover that you’re having a conversation. Now you may be familiar with the idea of blogging as a conversation (which it is) but this is much quicker, quirkier and more spontaneous. While there can be hours, days or months between some exchanges via blog comments and trackbacks, the Twitter conversation is practically live, with replies coming within minutes or even a couple of seconds of the original Tweet.

The second reason I was wrong about this is related to the first. Because Twitter is a live conversation, the content of what you say doesn’t have to be earth-shatteringly interesting every time. Next time you’re hanging out with a group of friends, take a minute or two to just sit and listen to the conversation. Chances are a lot of the remarks would sound pretty mundane out of context – but they serve to keep the conversation going.

Grant McCracken has thought about this a lot harder than I have, and describes it as ‘phatic communication’:

This is communication with little hard, informational content, but lots of emotional and social content. Phatic communications doesn’t get much said, but it has social effects so powerful, it gets lots done.

In the world according to Grant, even the humble cat blog can become philosophically and socially acceptable:

When I use Twitter or Facebook to say that I am entertaining my cat, no one, I’m pretty, sure gives a good God damn that I am entertaining my cat. But they are reminded that they have someone called Grant McCracken exists in their network.

Grant picked up the notion of phatic communication from Mark Earls, champion of the idea that human beings are herd animals. Maybe Tweets are the digital equivalent of all the snorts and grunts and trumpetings and flicking of tails by which herds of animals maintain contact and cohesion as they wander the dusty savannah. Digital savannah, anyone? EDIT: since writing this post Mark kindly sent me this excellent article about Twitter, which he wrote for Market Leader last year. It includes this observation:

Twitter is curiously comforting, like being part of a flock of birds on neighbouring roosts, twittering away.

I’d like to say ‘great minds think alike’, but in the Herd universe thinking is overrated and most behaviour is based on imitation. i.e. I probably copied the metaphor from Mark.

2. It will be one more thing to keep up with, like e-mail and blogs

This was a big one for me. Anyone who’s read my e-book on time management will know how challenging I’ve found it to keep up with the deluge of e-mail that comes with running an increasingly web-based business. So the idea of adding yet another stream of digital communication to my e-mail and blog feeds was about as appealing as a hole in the head. How on earth did people manage to keep up?

But the thing is, you don’t need to keep up with Twitter, any more than you need to keep up with everything that’s said by your friends when you’re not there. Unlike e-mail, there is absolutely no pressure to respond. Unlike subscribing to someone’s blog, there is no expectation that you will keep up with everything they write on Twitter. Because it’s a live conversation, you can join and leave it whenever you want. It’s impossible to ‘get behind’ and have to deal with a backlog.

3. The last thing I need is another source of interruptions

Again, I’ve blogged before about the havoc caused by interruptions to focused work, and the need to switch off things like e-mail and phones at certain stages of the creative process. So why would I want to open up another gateway to interruptions and broken concentration?

The answer to this is related to the previous point – because you don’t need to keep up with Twitter, you can switch it on and off whenever you like, with no fear of missing something important or letting a backlog pile up. Anyone who can switch off their e-mail to focus on a piece of writing or artwork, or let a phone call go through to the answerphone and call back later should have no problem switching off Twitter.

I tend to switch on Twitter when I’m ready for a break from concentrated work, or I’ve been working on my own all day and fancy a bit of instant human interaction. For an independent consultant used to working alone, this can be wonderfully refreshing, like having office background noise and banter on tap. Several consultant and freelancer friends have said the same thing to me – even while we’re scattered all over the place doing our thing, we can still feel connected. On quite a few occasions a chance meeting on Twitter has turned into a phone call, private message exchange or meeting up for a coffee and a chat.

When I’ve had enough or socialising, or when it’s time to get back on with the job, I simply shut down Twhirl (my Twitter application of choice).

4. Every time I switch on my mobile phone I’ll be deluged with text messages

I had an image of myself coming to the end of a day of meetings, switching on my phone and being deluged with the hundreds of text messages that had been sent since I last logged on. I’m glad to say that doesn’t happen. Because Twitter isn’t about keeping up and having to follow every single message, when you switch on your phone you only get the Tweets sent from that moment onwards. So unless you’re following thousands of Twitterers (not advisable) the trickle of text messages should be easily manageable.

5. I don’t want to be connected all the time

I had an image of Twitter as being something that most people used via their mobile phones, as a way of being always connected wherever they were. Which made me feel slightly queasy, the way I do if I spend too long at the computer. I don’t know about you, but I feel much better for having plenty of time out of the reach of electronic communications.

While a few people do Twitter all the time, I’ve discovered that many only use it at their computer. Even phone users don’t typically have it on by default – like me, they tend to switch on phone alerts when they’re out and about and feel the need of a little human contact, or when they discover something interesting and want to share it with other people. Otherwise, it’s pretty easy to escape Twitter.

6. It will be yet another internet addiction

Well after playing with Twitter for a few weeks, I don’t think this is true for me. While there is definitely an addictive quality to Twitter, I find it pretty easy to leave it alone. It’s not as if I’m on there all the time, I just like a little now and then. Just to be sociable. Honest. You should try it yourself, then you’ll see what I’m talking about….

Well I guess that’s that kind of thing all addicts say at first. But so far I’ve managed to keep my life on track, get plenty of writing and other work done, and I’m probably spending more time meeting up with people in ‘real life’ because of Twitter. So I don’t think it’s doing me too much harm. Plus it’s free, so I’ve not had to resort to stealing televisions or robbing banks to feed the habit.

It’s a bit like this…

I’ve been thinking about how to explain Twitter to people who haven’t tried it, and the best I can come up with is this analogy. Imagine you’re at a party in a big house and you’ve been having a great time, then suddenly you stumble upon a room at the back you hadn’t noticed before – and find lots of people you met briefly or saw from a distance earlier in the party, but here they’re all sat round in a much more intimate, relaxed group, goofing off and joking around. From time to time the conversation throws up interesting insights or tidbits, but there’s no pressure to be brilliant, or to say anything at all if you don’t feel like it. Your companions are much more approachable than they seemed in other rooms of the party house, and you glimpse a different side to them than you saw before.

So what has Twitter got to do with creativity?

I’m in luck here, as creative powerhouse Tim Siedell has already answered this question on Bad Banana Blog:

Oftentimes, when I’m percolating on an idea or two, I’ll jump into my Twitter stream and just see what happens. While my subconscious continues to chug along, I scan various tweets, click through to links, see what other people are doing and thinking about, and then WHAM! A word, a phrase, a thought spins my brain into a totally new direction. Over the past year, I can think of quite a few ideas directly generated or made better through this use of Twitter. I’m talking client work, not just creative play. As a person who must create on deadline, one of my jobs is to keep my radar up for any source of inspiration. Right now, Twitter is one of my favorite tools for doing so.

Tim’s experience fits the classic approach to generating ideas by combining different perspectives on a problem or topic – which is easy to do in a conversational forum like Twitter. He seems to be using Twitter as a creative randomizer.

Others are using Twitter for creative research. Like Brian Clark who last week invited his Twitter followers to Define what creativity means to you. This morning several of his respondents were lucky enough to be featured in a post on Copyblogger.

In Creative Constraints: Going to Jail to Get Free, Merlin Mann suggests that the 140 character limit on Twitter posts can enable creativity. As a fan of the famously constricted 17-syllable Japanese haiku, I couldn’t agree more. To prove the point, A.E. Baxter is writing Twitter Fiction, which you can follow here on Twitter.

But not everyone sees Twitter as a boon to creativity. Back in December 2006, Kathy Sierra’s post on The Asymptotic Twitter Curve pretty well summed up my reasons for not trying Twitter – used excessively, all those interruptions will destroy your creative flow. Although I believe the interruption-factor is manageable, it’s worth reading Kathy’s post as she describes some genuine pitfalls of digital communications for creative people.

Follow me…

I’ve given you my current take on Twitter, but I’m still getting used to it and certainly haven’t figured it out yet. Some people take a more strategic approach, particularly bloggers looking to build their audience, and while I’m certainly not averse to that happening I don’t feel quite comfortable with it as the main motivation for Twittering. One of the things I like about Twitter is the opportunity for spontaneous, informal, fun conversation, a bit of ‘time off’ from my other writing, so I wouldn’t want to lose those qualities.

So if you follow me on Twitter you’ll get a different version of me – one who doesn’t talk about creativity all the time for a start. If you’re lucky, you’ll also be among the first to hear about links and news of interest to creative professionals – like the free tickets to NESTA’s Innovation Edge conference I Twittered about last week. (If you’re interested in getting links like this, I’m also posting them on my Wishful Linking blog.)

When I started Twittering a few weeks ago, I alerted e-mail subscribers and members of the Wishful Thinking Facebook group to my experiment. I got some interesting feedback, including Rosanne who was candid enough to tell me my Twitter feed was pretty boring, ‘conversations and topics I was not a part of’. That told me that the best way to experience Twitter isn’t to read the feed via a webpage, but to get a Twitter account and join in the conversation yourself. If you decide to follow someone, you can also choose to filter out their replies directed at specific users, so that you only pick up the Tweets they write with the whole world in mind.

Twitter resources

I first came across this excellent video introduction to Twitter on Tim Siedell’s blog:

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Twhirl is the software I used for most of my Twittering. Twitterific is also pretty good.

Other people’s takes on Twitter:

Maki – 17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners
Nathania Johnson – Three Ways to Maximize Your Twitter Time for Networking, Marketing and Fun

Caroline Middlebrook – The Big Juicy Twitter Guide

Mike Sansome – Why I Use Twitter- Increase Infosumption without a Headache

Darren Rowse – 9 Benefits of Twitter for Bloggers, How to Use Twitter – Tips for Bloggers and 35 Twitter Tips from 35 Twitter Users.

Chris Brogan – How I Use Twitter to Promote My Blog

David Armano – Twitter + Your “Far Outer Circle”

Hugh MacLeod – My increasingly Twitter’d world

Kevin Dugan – Top 10 Twitter Hacks

How about you?

Have you tried Twitter?

If not – why not?

If so – what do you think of it?

Any tips on using Twitter for creativity?

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.

Social media enthusiast and all round good egg Antonio Gould recently interviewed me for one of Channel 4’s New Media 4Casts. I talk about the difference blogging has made to my own business, particularly in terms of making new friends and attracting new clients without having to interrupt them with a cold call. I also offer some suggestions on planning and writing a blog to promote your creative business.

The blogs I mention in the podcast are Copyblogger (excellent advice on writing blog posts), Gapingvoid (weird and wonderful uses of a blog – i.e. using rude cartoons to sell South African wine, Saville Row suits, Scottish feature films and Microsoft), and David Airey (great example of using a blog to growing your business as a creative freelancer).

If you’re considering starting a blog you should also have a good look at Problogger (start with his series on Blogging for Beginners) and read every single post on Skelliewag (there aren’t that many, but she’s achieved phenomenal success in a few short months – and tells you how she did it.).

The programme also features Emily Martin talking about how she makes a living as an artist from her beautiful Black Apple blog and Etsy shop – well worth checking these out if you want to use the internet to sell your artwork or other products.

Another contributor, Nick Booth, offers some excellent practical tips on podcasting and videocasting, and how letting go of copyright control can benefit you as a creative professional.

My bit starts at 7.50 but I recommend you listen to the whole thing, particularly if you’re relatively new to the whole social media/blogging scene. Antonio has done a terrific job of assembling the interviews to give an engaging overview of the possibilities for artists and other creative types.

As they say in all the best cheesy commercials – it worked for me, it could work for you too.

Bonus links: my pages on Blogging for Creative Professionals and why A Blog Is for Life, Not Just for Christmas.

One of the big events in blogspace last year was the Age of Conversation book organised by Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan. It featured contributions on the theme of ‘conversation’ from over 100 marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators, including David Armano, Roger von Oech, Tony D. Clark, Richard Huntington, Mark Earls, Steve Roesler, Mike Sansome and Thomas Clifford. As well as being a great read, the book raised funds for Variety, the children’s charity. You can get a copy and learn more at the Age of Conversation blog.

And now Gavin and Drew are doing it all over again – and giving you the opportunity to write a chapter for the follow-up book. I’ll be writing one – if you want to join me and the other authors, visit Drew’s Marketing Minute for details of how to sign up.

Whether or not you write a chapter, you can help out by voting for the theme of this year’s book. The three options are:

• Marketing Manifesto
• Why Don’t People Get It?
• My Marketing Tragedy (and what I learned)

Personally I’d love to write about ‘Why Don’t People Get It?’. I have lots to say about that, the (fun) challenge would be fitting it into 400 words. I can’t claim to be a marketer so am not so wild about the other options, but I’ll have a go if that’s what the people decide. Cast your vote on SurveyMonkey.

Image by Nooij

If you read this blog via RSS you were probably surprised by the abrupt switch to partial feeds last week. I know I was. I’ve always published full feeds because most subscribers prefer them, so it took a bit of detective work to unravel the Mystery of the Incredible Shrinking Feed.

The problem was caused by upgrading to Wordpress 2.3 last week – apparently it is now a ‘feature’ of Wordpress that if you use a <!–more–> tag to just show the beginning of a long post on your home page, it cuts the feed off at that point. Which seems a bit odd to me. Now I don’t like to complain about the good folks at Wordpress as they’re giving me a fantastic platform for free, so instead I’ll say thank you to Ronald Heft Jr for creating the Full Text Feed plugin to restore publisher choice in this matter.

I’ve installed the plugin and am hoping that’s the end of the matter. I can’t see the full feed in Google Reader yet, but apparently that’s because some RSS readers cache the feeds. Let’s put in a <!–more–> tag on this post and see if it works…

Hot diggety dawg! It works! At least in my reader. Sorry for the inconvenience, let me know if you have any problems getting the full feed.

Image by Tim Morgan

I’ve upgraded the commenting system on this blog to make it easier and more fun to use. And hopefully more useful to you. There are now three new features:

1. E-mail alerts of follow-up comments on a post

When you leave a comment, if you check the following box before submitting it, then you will receive an e-mail alert next time someone (either me or another commenter) leaves a comment on the same post.

I love this feature when I find it on other blogs – it means I don’t have to remember to check back later and see whether the blogger or anyone else responded. It makes it much easier to have a real conversation via comments. It’s done with the magic of the Subscribe to comments plugin.

If you decide you no longer wish to receive alerts for that post, you can always switch them off – there will be a link in every e-mail alert that takes you to the page with the ‘off’ switch.

2. Your picture next to your comment (if you want it)

Have a look at the comments on the post about my Time Management for Creative People E-book. You’ll see that several commenters now have their picture next to their comment. How does this happen? I’ve installed the MyAvatar plugin, which means that if you have a MyBlogLog account, it will automatically display the image from your MyBlogLog profile and the image will hotlink to your profile page. If you’re not a MyBlogLog member but have a Gravatar portrait, it will show your Gravatar.

If you see one of these silhouette images, it means you don’t have a MyBlogLog profile or Gravatar. If you’d like your picture to appear next to your comments, just visit Gravatar.com to sign up for a free account and upload your photo. Once you’ve done this, your picture will appear next to your comments on any blog with Gravatars enabled – such as Business of Design Online.

It’s up to you what kind of image you use. It could be a photo like these (click on the images to see who the commenters are):

Or you could use something more funky or abstract, like Nela’s Gravatar of one of her fabulous paintings:

Or how about using your logo, like Brian Wallace of Nowsourcing:

The only fly in the ointment for me is that MyAvatar is bringing up the old photo from my MyBlogLog profile, even though I uploaded my new photo days ago – so my brand recognition isn’t seamless yet! Anyone know why it’s doing this?

3. Your latest blog post after your comment

Finally, if you have a blog of your own and you check the following box when submitting your comment, the CommentLuv plugin will look for your blog feed and post a link to your latest blog post immediately under your comment.

When you click the ‘Submit Comment’ button, a link to your latest blog post should appear after your comment.

(N.B. it’s not perfect and doesn’t always find the feed, I’m afraid I’m not qualified to help with this, but you there’s a discussion about CommentLuv on the Wordpress forums, which might be helpful.)

Hopefully this will increase your chances of other Wishful Thinking readers visiting your blog, to see what you’ve written. Of course, the more enticing your headline, the more chance someone will want to read your post – Brian Clark has some excellent advice on the art of writing Magnetic Headlines.

Thanks to David Airey for the inspiration

I got the idea for these changes from reading David Airey’s blog – David’s comments section is a model for other bloggers to follow, both technically and in his prompt and generous responses to commenters. He introduced me to these three plugins via his post on Top Five Essential Wordpress Plugins and (typically) in the comments on his post about How to Stop Image Hotlinking and Bandwidth Theft.

Thanks David!

My unofficial comments policy

Some blogs have an official ‘comments policy’ describing what is/isn’t acceptable in comments left by readers. I’ve not felt the need to write one, given that 99.99% of you are so nice and respectful, even when disagreeing with me and among yourselves. Thank you, and long may it continue.

As for the 0.01% – as my friend Pete Black would say, If you’re just going to be abusive, remember it’s traditional to remain anonymous. Also try not to swear too much or you’ll get caught in the spam filter.

I’ll do my best to respond to all comments promptly. Sometimes I’m away on client business and it can take me a few days to catch up – so the e-mail alerts should be good to let you know I’ve got back to you. If I’ve not responded after a few days, feel free to prod me via e-mail.

What do you think? Please leave a comment…

What do you think of the changes?

Are there any other features you’d like to see in the comments?

What plugins do you use on your own blog comments?

Having taken a few steps into the New Year and received some great suggestions about what you’d like me to write about in 2008, I’ll pause for a moment to give you an update on some old projects and what to expect over the next few weeks.

New tagline: ‘inspiring creative professionals’

If you look at the header at the top of the page, you’ll see I’ve changed the tagline from ‘coaching creative professionals’ to ‘inspiring creative professionals’. This was partly (ahem) inspired by the beautiful folders in the photo above, which were a present from a friend in Japan. Apart from the fact that my research project revealed that some people in the creative industries are virtually allergic to the word ‘coaching’, these days coaching is only part of what I do – albeit a very important part. As well as coaching, my work now involves blogging, training, presenting and writing e-books – all of which are designed to inspire creative professionals.

And as a poet, I couldn’t resist the double-entendre of ‘inspiring creative professionals’ as ‘creative professionals who are inspiring’. That would be you, by the way.

So I’ve decided ‘inspiring creative professionals’ is much more it.

Blog series and e-book: Introduction to Business Coaching

Oh dear, I let this one slip, didn’t I? Sorry. The great thing about last year was that business was busy and I got back to working with new and exciting clients after the hiatus caused by doing an MA. But I must admit I struggled to keep the blog going at times, as I was writing lots of new course material – and this series was one of the casualties. The good news is that, now that I’ve written the courses that are the core of my training offering, I should have more time for the blog in 2008.

So I’ll be posting the rest of the Introduction to Business Coaching series this week and next, then releasing it as a free e-book under a Creative Commons licence.

A new series for creative professionals

The ‘Intro to Business Coaching’ series is aimed more at managers and leaders of creative teams, so to balance things out I’m going to do a series aimed at creatives and artists.

I’m keeping it under wraps for now, but if you liked the series and e-book on Time Management for Creative People then hopefully you’ll like this one. It’s on a different topic, but one just as relevant to your creative and career development.

Photo by mysza831

Research Project – ‘Coaching in the Creative Industries’

My coaching research project was another casualty of last year’s work rush and a few of you have asked what happened to it. The research was my dissertation for the MA in Creative & Media Enterprises at the University of Warwick. I’m pleased to say the examiners saw fit to award me the MA with distinction, so I’m now entitled to use those letters after my name.

I received some really useful feedback from the examiners on the research paper, which I’m incorporating into an expanded version for publication on this blog. Before I can publish it, I’ve promised to show it to all the interviewees so that they can check I have represented their views accurately, which will add some extra time to the publication schedule.

So look out for the research report on Wishful Thinking later this year. You guessed it – it will be Creative Commons licensed for free distribution. There should also be another interview podcast before that, and a series of blog posts, for those of you who may not have the time to digest a 100-page academic report.

Book Reviews

I’m constantly recommending books to clients, and the Books + Links pages on Creativity and Creative Careers are among the most popular on Wishful Thinking, so I’ll be expanding the Books + Links section. I also want to write some longer book reviews on the main blog. I’ve been reading some great books recently and am looking forward to enthusing about them to you.

Lashings of Creativity…

Apart from all that I’ve got plenty still to say about the creative process, and will be offering more tips and principles for making your creative work easier and more enjoyable.

As I said at the start of January, if there are any creativity-related issues you’d like me to address, drop me an e-mail and I’ll see what I can do.

Well, there it is. I hope you’re looking forward to it as much as I am.

Photo by diongillard

If you subscribe to Wishful Thinking via RSS…

Could you please check whether you are subscribed to the Feedburner feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/WishfulThinking

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The Feedburner feed is the only one I can guarantee will always be published in future - so if you want to make sure you keep receiving Wishful Thinking, I’d be grateful if you would point your reader to this one.

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