Category: General Ramblings (Page 1 of 19)

No.

Have a read of this piece on the BBC Magazine written by a poor poor journalist who has been forced to experience the internet and phone signal in an area previously untouched by such modern inconveniences.

Sorry, I know I’m sounding snarky. The thing that gets my goat here is that it’s wonderful to be a tourist experiencing the un-touched parts of the planet – but the reality is those places have people living in them, and why on earth should they be denied access to the internet or mobile signal to make us feel better and really ‘get away from it all’.

I feel the same way towards this journalist as I do to 40 year olds who complain about Radio 1. There’s a simple answer here… turn it off.

Best line in the piece:

Take Ernest Shackleton’s heroic Antarctic feat – one of the greatest adventure stories of all time.

One wonders whether it would even have happened had the internet been around in his day.

Of course, you’re quite right. The internet has killed the spirit that led to explorers wanting to push the limits. These guys are quite clearly  just sat in front of their computers experiencing the small world via the net and not getting out there.

…and breath.

Thing is, when you’re building an API – doesn’t matter if you’re the BBC, government or a start-up – it’s so very tempting to add the line ‘only for non-commerical use’. It was the line that allowed us to pursued people at the BBC to release data via backstage. It’s a really handy way to help management understand that releasing data isn’t a threat to your profit line or to society. Thing is though – it’ll only take you so far – actually it’ll start to hinder development.

We all know that the best way to allow access to your API is to keep it as easy as possible – making developers apply, and then wait, for a key before they can start messing with your stuff is a sure fire way to stop people getting groovy with your data. When I was at Lonely Planet we developed three levels of developer access – the journey to getting these levels lasted a year and many meetings with legal and management. Finally we got to a point where there was a way for developers to instantly access data, but then have a path where they could make money from their work – ultimately the reason that people will want to move beyond the initial itch and building of groovy cool stuff to the larger scale making some money kinda stuff.

Level 1

Free and easy access. Police it by using call limits if you like – but don’t require registration or any kind of authorisation – let people quickly get to your stuff and let them play. Feel free to add ‘non commercial use’ to this access – but if you’ve limited the api calls – why bother?

Level 2

Semi-hard. Ask people to register. Give them access to a more robust API, or a larger number of calls – but essentially let people get on with it. If they want to try to make money – let them – they’ll soon be in touch if the money is pouring in and they want to take things to the next level.

Level 3

The next level. Solid, production ready API. No limits and working hand-in-hand with internal developers.

The great thing about letting people make money is that they’ll make you money in return – you don’t have to spend months locked away in an R&D lab – but more importantly you’ll see stuff you’ve never even thought of. It’s the Hack Day theory – Hack Days are a pressure cooker for innovation, an intensified period of R&D that months of traditional work could not replicate.

But what if you’re a not-for profit? The BBC? Government? Well then… it’s even more important that you let people make money from public data. Government data has a problem – it’s really not cool – it attracts amazing developers who want to make the world a better place. But what about those developers who want to make the world a better place and need to put a meal on the table? It’s either direct subsidy – or let them build something that they can sell – not the data itself perhaps – but a service built on that data.

inspired, originally uploaded by iamjon*.

Back for the second week it’s Friday Foto Fun. This week I’ve chosen a shot of the Minster at York.

I lament sometimes that as a nation, we’ve lost the art of and forgotten what it is do Great Things. York Minster is Great. It’s Awesome and the very presence of it inspires greatness.

The building dominates the entire area, and walking into it you’re immediately made to feel small… perhaps that’s the whole point. In any case, it’s a building that inspires me to greatness.

Do something Great this weekend.

Biking to Work, originally uploaded by buteijn.

Biking to Work

This, pulled over from the flickr explore section, caught my eye today to mark a return to the Friday photo posting – simple things that inspire or make you smile on a Friday afternoon.

For me this image captures the end of summer, the slow colourful decline into Autumn and the dark cold mornings of winter just around the corner. It’s not sad, or glum – but feels happy in it’s celebration of a good summer – a job well done.

The cyclists in the shot pick up the energy, remind us that things go on, that life has a natural rhythm, that perhaps we should spend a little more time exploring that rhythm and try to be a little more in sync with it.

It seems only yesterday that I was posting here about my new and very exciting job at Lonely Planet. The Innovation Ecosystem Manager (no, I never stopped having to explain to people what that meant – in the end I went with ‘do cool shit’).

In fact it’s been nearly two years since I left the BBC (kind of) to head to Australia, then head back to the UK and try to broaden the horizons of a company with pretty broad horizons. It felt like the perfect mesh of cool and tech, the chance to explore the world I’d been looking for in combination with the opportunity to do great things with a great company.

Leaving Lonely Planet was not as hard as I expected, mainly because I’d felt for a little while that LP had to concentrate on it’s bottom line during an extremely difficult time and doing outlandish cool stuff – or R&D as I like to call it – was simply not the best thing to be doing. The fact is that’s the right decision – if you are not able to follow through on a project you should have the intellectual honesty (thanks Matt G) to say so. Of course R&D is the very life-blood of any company looking to inhabit the digital sphere, but sometimes, just sometimes, you need to take a step back and make sure what you’re doing day-to-day is the right thing.

Lonely Planet has some inspirational and truly talented people working for it – to call out a few – I’ll start at the top – Matt Goldberg is simply one of the finest people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work for. A keen eye for what really matters and enough ‘down with the kids’ cool to be approachable and engaging – when it comes to learning how to be a Leader, he’s at the top of my list along with Richard Titus and Ashley Highfield.

It’ll also come as no surprise that I hold Ken Hoetmer, Johnny Cussen and Julian Doherty personally responsible for all the greatest things that have come out of LP digital in the recent past – of course there’s a whole army of talented people behind them – but it’s these guys that are forging the path inside the organisation and these guys that are having a real impact on what the traveller gets when they engage with LP digitally – and bluntly – that’s all that really matters.

Finally I have to mention Vivek Wagle and Venessa Peach – both of them struggle with technology that feels as if it’s actively trying to stop you doing your job rather than helping you – to maintain an editorial digital presence that both inspires and engages – without them (and their cool teams – Andy, Lewti, Ali & Tom Hall I’m looking at you) – lonelyplanet.com would be a much poorer place.

So what now? Well as of about a month ago I’m the new Digital Director at Hachette UK – they’re a pretty big publishing company you may have heard of 😉 At some point down the line I’ll post more on my day-to-day role here, but for now – it’s a heady mix of new product development, and operational management – and what an exciting time to be at the very heart of publishing!

Being advertised at in facebook is a pain in the ass – the ads are never relevant and regardless of how much time I spend clicking the little crosses and telling facebook I’m not interested in free holidays to spain…. I still get adverts selling me free holidays to spain.

For the first time ever today I got a good ad – very nicley done by a chap called Phil Harper. I’m posting the ad here along with a link to his CV because, whilst not exactly original, he’s making a damn good effort and his CV looks impressive. So… those of you out there in a position to hire this guy – have a read of his CV and drop him a note.

Smart guy. Oh, and his stance that ‘the Daily Mail newspaper is a joke’ – really only adds to his employability.

If people you know read it, inform them of their mistake. Kindly let them know that although it looks like a newspaper, it is in fact a desperate imperialistic rag not even good enough to wipe the arse of its own demi-godess Margaret Thatcher.