LIFE MOVES PRETTY FAST...

My thoughts on baby Planners

I have always said that I am not a big fan of "baby planners", that I think that planners benefit from doing something else first, be that in advertising or out in the real world, however I have started to re-think my position on this.

Felix has made it very obvious that he would like nothing more than to follow his mother into the world of Planning and is even starting to study books that he feels will help.

So I say bring on the baby Planners!

OBAMA'S uncensored acceptance speech!

Hat tick, Nick Fell

Loving this!

OBAMA - a montage of hope

YES WE CAN

Thanks i-Boy

This made my morning!

OBAMA - Hope, Dope, Pope, Grope...

This is one of the classic design images of the US Presidential Election. 

It was designed by the famous/infamous Shephard Fairey, he of Andre the Giant (Obey Giant) fame. Its a great story - a limited print run of 350 sold out within minutes, Fairey then produced wild postings for Obama supporters to plaster across the US. He was promptly arrested.

Its such a clear, simple and powerful piece of design. Tutorials began spring up online.

Have a look at this brilliant site that collates all the online homages to the Fairey original.

These are a few of my favourites.

Homer and Obama - the truth...

Obama/Cameron: The Importance of Thinking Time

This was an conversation between Obama and Cameron that was picked up by ABC microphones which they had not known were on. It captures something that I feel strongly about, they call it the "dentist's waiting room" - the way that your day at work gets chunked up into lots of little meetings, one leads into another leads into another.

Its a great piece of unscripted honest dialogue.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to actually do any proper thinking in a day like that - can't be done.

You have to give yourself time to actually do the thinking that goes into work. Sadly I actually have to schedule that Thinking Time into my diary otherwise people think that it looks empty and adds meetings in. The idea that the only constructive time is meeting time fills me with despair. And I actually think that we have a pretty good meeting culture at work...

Obama: "Somebody who had worked in the White House who - not Clinton himself, but somebody who had been close to the process - said that, should we be successful, that actually the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking . . .”
Cameron:“These guys just chalk your diary up.”
Obama:“Right. In 15-minute increments . . .”
Cameron:“We call it the dentist’s waiting room. You have to scrap that because you’ve got to have time.”
Obama:“And, well, and you start making mistakes, or you lose the big picture. Or you lose a sense of, I think you lose a feel . . .”
Cameron:“Your feeling. And that is exactly what politics is all about. The judgment you bring to make decisions.”
Obama:“That’s exactly right. And the truth is that we’ve got a bunch of smart people, I think, who know 10 times more than we do about the specifics of the topics. And so if what you’re trying to do is micromanage and solve everything then you end up being a dilettante but you have to have enough knowledge to make good judgments about the choices that are presented to you.”

Obama - DNC 2004

I'm in the middle of writing an article for The Spectator on Obama.

It's a piece about enabling technologies, Web 2.0, the Long Tail and grass-roots activation. It's a fascinating subject. I use Obama a lot as a case study in my work - I think that he represents a new model of organization and popular democracy.

During my research this weekend I found the speech that Obama gave at the Democratic National Convention in 2004.

I was living in the States at the time and remember watching this speech with my then boyfriend, now husband. We were road-tripping in California and in a motel close to Big Sur when we saw it. I remember both of us just sitting there, open-mouthed by the end of it, awed by the passion and intelligent intensity of what we had just seen.

TV commentators were obviously taken by surprise by what they had just seen. They couldn't get his name right when they talked about him afterwards, mixing up the first name and the surname, but for sure they all knew that "this skinny kid with a funny name and big ears" was destined for something big.

If you haven't ever seen that DNC speech, take a look. It's a modern classic.

Barely Political

The US primaries are still endlessly fascinating.

Barely Political is one site/YouTube channel that I am ever so slightly addicted to. It just makes me laugh out loud.

The latest video is about the murky Irish past of Senator O'Bama.

When we were on holiday a few weeks back the only news channel that we got was Fox. Fox News sucks you in as you vegetate in front of it. It's impossible to turn it off. The O'Bama video is a great example of modern web satire. I have seen clips just like this from the Fox team about him.

Enjoy.