a unit of delivery

We won an award last night. Which was nice. And I met an old advertising friend the other day and he said, so what is GDS? So I thought I should try and explain. This can then be one of those blog...

how to be interesting - live!

About seven years ago I wrote a post called 'How To Be Interesting'. I've, sort of, been regreting it ever since. It's just such a hostage to fortune - lends itself so easily to a one-word...

m1 to marble arch

About 9 years ago I decided to walk up the Edgware Road, from Marble Arch to the bottom of the M1. This morning I thought I'd do it the other way round. I got the tube to Brent Cross and set off. I...

so there you go

naming is hard

weekend

rubbish reckon blimey

hmm

grandfather clock

A splendid thing. By Maarten Baas.

statues of committees

"I've searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees." - GK Chesterton. I aim to prove him wrong.

day for night

For various reasons I've been thinking more about sleep and sleeplessness of late. A couple of articles hoved into view and I realised these are things I'd like to experiment with - different...

points of power

darkly

Went to Kinetica at the weekend. I've been a few times now. I should enjoy it more. There are always some good things - normally the things that are resolutely mechanical and/or funny. But I always...

young avengers - adventures in the present

I'm enjoying Young Avengers from Keiron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie a lot. (I'm especially pleased because I could see lots that was brilliant in Phonogram but felt just exactly the wrong age to...

advice clutter

mostly she is about change

I've had this vague thought that I would try and write an APG paper about what we've been doing at GDS. There's a good story there about applying Account Plannery stuff in other circumstances. But,...

wild swing from golfing guinea pig

the value of sugar for steadying the nerves

Another fascinating read about the history of government communication. Unreadable graphs. Always the best thing to stick in an end-paper. The book was a big surprise to me, I'm a bit of an...

a few good information officers

Been reading this history of the COI. A few good moments: ] "As long as the Newspapers shall continue to be considered as important as they now are...". I wonder when that'll run out. "A Hint of...

increments insufficient

"But incremental improvement is guaranteed to be obsolete over time. Especially in technology, where you know there’s going to be non-incremental change." Larry Page I keep coming back to this....

just add puppies

preserving complexity

Complexity is not bad. Complication is bad. Complexity is inevitable and often useful. "This is why business process re-engineering was such a disaster with 80% of BPR initiatives resulting in...

quantity then quality

Right, managed a post a day in January. Now to try and write some good ones.

smallifying

Kindle Book 53 was Little Bets by Peter Sims. And we're up to date! That's everything I've read on my Kindle so far. Affordable loss, that makes sense: "Sarasvathy points to the value of what she...

pitching and the elevator

Kindle Book 52 was Small Message, Big Impact: Put The Elevator Speech Effect to Work For You by Terri Sjodin which I didn't find very useful. I read it because I've been fascinated by the idea of...

the system of work

Book 52. Managers as Designers in the Public Services: Beyond Technomagic by David Wastell. Another good and dense read for work. Lots of meaty sense. Gets to the point that digital service design,...

for a long time...

...the headline at the top of this blog was "we're as disappointed as you are". There's a reason why in these comments. For some reason I was reminded of that by this excellent Tim Harford article....

wilton no more

The Wilton has gone. Ah well.

it takes a model village

We went to the Model Engineering Show at Alexandra Palace at the weekend. I found myself drawn to the little figures that sometimes populate the models. They're often the least regarded bit of the...

ten words

Book 51. Don't Think of an Elephant by George Lakoff. Probably no startling revelations in here for any of you lot. I liked the idea of a ten-word philosophy though, such as this summary of...

more criticism

I've already covered books 49 and 50 here. Ha! Day off.