June 30, 2006
busy times at the 'void
1. Thomas just got back from English Cut's busiest-ever US tour. Looks like he and I are going to be under the gun for the next while.
New York is traditionally Savile Row's busiest American market. Not with us. We do New York, but San Francisco is much busier for us.
The main reason is quite simply, the power of the weblogs and Web 2.0. A lot of our SF customers are, like Thomas and me, Web 2.0 entrepreneurs themselves. So there's maybe more of a cultural and emotional alignment there, than with the financiers and lawyers who make up the traitional NYNY market for $4000 English suits.
2. Stormhoek just gets busier and busier. Oi, vey...
June 29, 2006
more widgety goodness
Nice to see the gapingvoid widget starting to get "out there". Looks like it's on a few dozen sites already. Thanks, Everybody!
Paul and I are still tweaking away at it. It's got an RSS feed now, if you just want the cartoons in widget-free mode.
Paul and I also have a few other widget ideas we're working on. Watch this space.
marketing dork
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
[UPDATE:] Turns out Corey King used to work for the guy in the cartoon. Hilarious and heartbreaking. Makes me SO GLAD to no longer be in my twenties, schlepping for an ad agency.
valleywag: "stormhoek is the official drink of the [silicon] valley alcoholic"
I see Dave Parmet has been busy. From Valleywag:
“It can’t be a 90s bubble party without Absolut,” says Dot-com marketer David Parmet. “Could we say Stormhoek is the new Absolut?” With marketing blogger Hugh MacLeod pimping this wine in the Valley through branded prints, blogging, and sponsored geek dinners, Stormhoek is the official drink of the Valley alcoholic.Dave and I go back a ways. He did some really incredible stuff for English Cut.
June 28, 2006
June 27, 2006
the stormhoek guide to wine blogging
I was asked to create an ad for Stormhoek, to be published in the well-known international wine & spirits trade magazine, The Drinks Business.
Instead of giving them the usual "Here's why you should buy our product" bilge, we decided to give the readers something they might actually find useful. Yes, and that means useful for our competitors, as well.
Hence a 16-page insert, "The Stormhoek Guide To Wine Blogging". Inspired by Robert Scoble's seminal "The Corporate Weblog Manifesto", of course.
It hits the newstands sometime this week. In the meantime, you can download the PDF here. Thanks.
June 26, 2006
we'll be right back
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
Jeff Jarvis explains why the standard ad agency biz model is toast [And a very good job he does of it, too]:
First: Of course, there’s no saying that these new activities will lead to “more revenue or fatter profits.” They won’t. Period. That’s because there is now no scarcity of competitors for those dollars and ways to spend them more efficiently in more places. The amount spent on advertising likely won’t change, but the revenue will be spread thin.To my friends in the ad biz: Get out while you can.
Or failing that, find out where the edges are, and head for there.
June 25, 2006
it's the customers, stupid
Good point from wine journo, Jamie Goode re. the wine trade, in the gapingvoid comments:
The big retailers hold the winning hand. They have the customers. The footfall. In a world of over-supply, the people making the stuff tend to get stuffed. [...] If you make wine, your best hope is to create a strong brand that the retailers 'need'. Otherwise, you're always negotiating from a position of weakness, because they have what you need - customers.[Scots whisky manufacturer, James Thomson replies in the comments below:]
Supermarkets neither distribute or control information or word of mouth. Reputation can be quickly eroded - so small producers should never give up as there is always another path.We have decided to create a drinks product that will never be made available to large retailers - ever. We don't need them and we don't like them that much.
[TechCrunch:] "The Best Widget Ever- Gapingvoid".
Thanks, Michael!
on being in the wine business
Some thoughts on being in the wine business. Some may be truer than others:
1. I never, ever considered getting into this business. It just kindasorta happened. My first job outside of highschool was working in an Edinburgh wine bar [Whigham's], so maybe there’s a connection there, but somehow I doubt it.
2. A common lament of smart people in the wine trade, is the utter lack of smart people in the wine trade.
3. Too many bloody vineyards, not enough bloody retail and distribution outlets. And there’s not a single person in the trade who knows what to do about it.
4. The average Brit drinks four times as much wine as the average American. Yanks like their beer and cocktails more.
5. If you want to sell wine, you have to create brands that have real meaning to people. That’s not quite the same as creating brands that have real meaning to you and your pretentious, "undertones of blackcurrent" asshole friends.
6. Wine retailers must learn to have authority, and use it to have real dialogue with their customers, as opposed to outsourcing it to the wine critics in the media. The Americans understand this better than the Brits. The Americans understand The Kinetic Quality better than the Brits etc.
7. The wine trade is about putting liquid into bottles and convincing somebody else to give you money for it, at a profit. It’s not about retreating to the boonies and doing the midlife-crisis-loser-hippie-downsizing-vineyard thing.
8. The retailers are so utterly flooded with choices that their brains are permanently fried by it.
9. If your wine is not outstanding [for the price point it occupies], you’re dead meat. It's just as hard to sell a $10 bottle of wine as it is to sell a $100 botle of wine. At least if you want to make any money, it is.
10. Seems like both Stormhoek.com and gapingvoid are starting to get read by a lot of people in the wine trade. They rarely leave comments, but prefer to lurk. I guess what we did got their attention.
after we get done
I drew this one back in Paris back in December at a party [1], and ended up giving it to a very clever and charming American girl. Came across it again on Flickr [2]. Heh.
June 23, 2006
get your own gapingvoid widget
The gapingvoid widget has arrived. You can get yours here.
Feel free to add it to your blog sidebar, website, or wherever. Thanks.
Kudos to Paul Farnell at Salted.com for designing it.
[UPDATE:] The widget now comes as a Netvibes module. Thanks to Victor Cerutti for building it.
[UPDATE:] Here are some add-ons to the widget I'm working with Paul on:
1. RSS feeds [obviously].Hopefully have them up in the next day or two.
2. Making it compatible for Typepad [Thanks, Anil, for the pointer].
3. Making it compatible with Wordpress [Does anybody know anybody at Wordpress who can help?].
4. Giving people a choice of widths: 100, 150, 200, 300 and 400 pixels.
5. Perhaps also having a desktop widget for both Mac and Windows..
[UPDATE:] Also, if I ever put advertising on it [not really planning on doing so, but you never know], it'll be on the pop-up bit, and CERTAINLY NOT the wee bit that goes on the user's sidebar.
[SUNDAY UPDATE:] Paul and I are still working on the widget, so expect some improvements in the very near future. Also, if you have any ideas how to improve it, let's hear 'em. Obviously, we want the widget to be as user-friendly as possible. Thanks.
June 22, 2006
more lithographs...
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
I'm in London today, signing ANOTHER THOUSAND lithographs for the Stormhoek 100 Geek Dinners etc.
This time we're doing a green [white wine] version of the "Puppy" cartoon.
Not exactly the most fascinating task in the world, so to make time go by quicker I listened to Michael Arrington, Doc, Steve Gillmor et al go at each other over at The Gilmor Gang podcast.
[Getting into the groove etc.]
While listening to these chaps talking, I'm thinking to myself, "Now here are some guys trying to change the world. Rock on."
Rock on, indeed. Changing the world is a good thing. And one or two of these chaps might actually pull it off. Heck, even trying to change the world and failing nobly is a good thing. Inspiring stuff for Your Poor Cartoonist, stuck under a stack of signature-requiring art.
Of course, "Changing the world" and "The world is changing" are both very common themes in the blogosphere. If you read Jeff Jarvis you'll know all about it. In spades.
BUT...
I'm getting less interested in changing the world. It's just too damn big and messy. I'd rather just change a small part of it. In my favor.
Hence the "sliver" cartoon, republished above.
Hence why I'm getting more and more interested in the wine business. Changing that business, even in a small way, is both tangible and doable. And getting more groovy to me by the day.
We live in intreresting times.
the future of creativity...?
I am so reading this.
Blurb: The book is essential reading for professionals in media, technology, and communication industries, and a valuable reference for academics in related fields. We recommend it as a serious resource for anyone thinking playfully about the future of art and social softwares.
shameless commercialism run riot, yeah baby...
Thomas has made an appearance on Priceless.com, the Mastercard lifestyle magazine.
Says Mahon, "People value the time with their tailor because they are dealing with somebody that takes the time to understand them."A good tailor will guide you toward fabrics that fit your lifestyle - if you travel to warm places or tend to be a little rough on your jackets, he'll select the proper fabrics and will tailor the garments appropriately. Clients have at least one extensive fitting before picking up their suit, which can take as long as several months for a tailor to complete.
June 21, 2006
June 20, 2006
loic and joi talking
An utterly facinating conversation between Loic and Joi.
A 50 minute conversation on online games (WOW and Second Life), video, online music and copyright.You want the future? Here it is.
Great stuff, Guys. Thanks for taking time to make the video.
June 19, 2006
in search of microsoft's next big idea
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
In a recent post I talked about Microsoft not having their "Next Big Idea".
Which doesn't bode well for the future, if you ask me. Which I'm guessing is partly the reason their Robert Scoble is moving on.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they do have their next big idea, only I don't know what it is. They haven't told me yet. Or maybe, they haven't quite around to articulating to themselves yet, either. Who knows?
In the comments, Microsoft's Steve Ball had a go at expressing it:
Your PC is a 'Powers of 10' microscope you can use to study every minute detail of any subject under the sun.Not a bad start, but I don't think it nails it. Something needs to be more concise, somehow.It is also the telescope you can use to discover and interact with every thought that has ever been thought, every book, lecture, class, picture, film, play, brainstorm, equation, contradiction, emotion, song, performance, conversation, idea, person, character, genius, and idiot who opts in to participate in the globally connected collective consciousness.
The PC is also our primary local interactive connection to global context (physical, social, political, emotional, spiritual) in the universe.
Today's tools and interfaces are extremely primitive. If you think of Vista as MS-DOS, then image what lies ahead when we get to the next 'Vista' ten years from now.
We're exchanging primitive and random bits of ascii and you think 'we're done'?
These boxes give us the power to share and distribute experiences and broadcast intelligence (and stupidity) in ways we have only just begun to imagine.
Whatever the final answer is, I'd like to get it down to something short and incisive enough to where, as Steve suggested, it would make a good "cartoon drawn on the back of a business card". Seriously.
So I'm going to have a go, seeing if I can [A] find out what Microsoft's next big idea actually is, and [B] understand it well enough to turn it into one of my wee bizcard cartoons. If I can't do it, I honestly don't think it's because I'm stupid. I think it's because nobody really knows what it is, yet.
Any Microsoft employees reading this, if you can help me with this, I would appreciate it. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail. That goes for anyone else, too, of course. It should make for interesting conversation. Thanks.
thingamy podcast
Eric Mattson has a great podcast interview with Sigurd, founder of Thingamy. Very interesting stuff.
[You can also download the podcast from my server here.]
[Bonus Link:] Thingamy screenshots.
[Disclosure: I have a small stake in Thingamy.]
bent double
DULCE ET DECORUM ESTBent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
June 18, 2006
thingamy vs. sap, potential vs. capability
As Hamish [my old highschool buddy and uber-smart, rockstar SAP consultant] wisely tells me:
1. Thingamy has potential.
2. But SAP has actual capability.
Potential vs Capability. The debate continues...
After talking to Hamish on the phone earlier today about this very same subject, I rang up Thingamy's founder, Sigurd, and relayed some of the earlier points brought up [quite rightly] by Hamish.
To drive the conversation forward, Sig posts his reply here.
Capability in my mind is about two things - direction and infrastructure - like roads. Is it the right path? Is it a dirt road or a three-lane motorway? Does it get you there most efficiently? Does it accommodate all kind of vehicles and traffic?Like I said, the debate continues. Feel free to add to it in the comments. Thanks.
[Disclosure: I have a small stake in Thingamy.]
world's youngest blogger?
Euan Robert McAdam was only born a couple of days ago, and he's already started a blog:
Reasons I was good:Awwww... Congratualtions to Euan's parents, Rachel and Paul.* I waited until after the football to come out (England 2 - 0 Trinidad and Tobago)
* I came out during the day
* I've made my arms legs and stuff all in the right places
* I came out a nice Scotland blue colourReasons I was naughty:
* I made it hard for mummy
megabytes
As regular gapingvoid readers will know, I have a small stake in a software company called Thingamy, which was founded my my crazy Norwegian friend, Sigurd Rinde.
So yesterday Sig and I were talking about megabytes. Here's the skinny:
Microsoft Internet Explorer: 20 megabytes
Skype: 27.7 megabytes
Thingamy: 30 megabytes
Firefox: 46 megbytes.
One of Ben’s Hammersley's high-resolution digital photographs (raw format): 50 megabytes.
The memory card on my Nokia N70: 61 megabytes
Microsoft Office: 200 megabytes.
SAP: 10,000 megabytes for the basic skeleton, plus the data.
Less code good, more code bad etc.
June 17, 2006
how microsoft lost their canary
As any reader of Techmeme will know, the big story in the bloggersphere this week is Bill Gates leaving Microsoft.
And Techmeme readers will also know that the second biggest story was Robert Scoble also leaving Microsoft.
Actually, I think there was a bigger story that we bloggers kinda missed. Neither Bill leaving or Robert leaving is the biggest story per se. The "Big Story" REALLY is:
Micorosoft losing both Bill and Robert in the very same week.
In one week, Microsoft lost the two people who best expressed Microsoft; one on the macro-corporate level, one on the micro-grass-roots level.
What does this really say about Microsoft?
To me it says, "Party Over".
To me it says, Microsoft finally has reached the crossroads indicated in the cartoon above, and have opted to take the non-Cluetrain route. They opted to take that route because they have run out of ideas. They're at a time in their corporate life when they need a big idea. And you what? They. Simply. Don't. Have. One.
Hey, it's their company, it's their money, they can do what they like. There's lots of money still there to made, managing one's own demise. General Motors has been doing it for decades. And Madison Avenue, that's pretty much all they do now.
But Robert was the canary in the coal mine. And Microsoft's just lost their canary.
We live in interesting times.
[UPDATE:] Steve Clayton from Microsoft pipes in. Rock on.
As for running out of ideas and the party being over: that all depends on your perspective and I personally think the party could be just about to begin.Just as an example of how things are changing here: what kind of company would put their leaders on something like Channel 9 right after the announcemnts this week? A year ago we wouldn’t for sure. It shows balls frankly on the part of all concerned.
top three
These are the three best things I've read this week:
1. Jeff Jarvis writes about Bill Gates leaving Microsoft: "The Meaning of Bill".
2. Guy Kawasaki: "How to Kick Silicon Alley's Butt".
3. Paul Graham: "Why Start-ups Condense In America".
Enjoy.
nobody really knows where the whole thing is going to end up
Thomas of English Cut [Savile Row tailors etc] was recently interviewed by BBC Radio 4's "In Business", where they talk about "Web 2.0". Jeff Jarvis is also interviewed, as well as the Director General of the BBC, and some bigwig over at The Guardian.
You can listen to it on their website for the next week or so, or you can download the podcast here. Thomas makes his appearance towards the end, about 22 minutes into it.
It was actually a really interesting show. I think the key point I took away is that the media business is currently in a period of great transition i.e. nobody really knows where the whole thing is going to end up. This inclues big media companies AND "blogging gurus" alike.
Tom made a really interesting point: That by having blog, it attracted a completely different type of customer than the kind he had before English Cut came along. Totally changed the landscape forever etc.
[Bonus Link:] A video clip taken from my local village pub, with my friend, Robert Scoble's face appearing on the BBC evening news.
June 16, 2006
June 15, 2006
why women leave new york
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
[Dedicated to Laren, of course.]
good snowballs:
JP Rangaswami hits the bull's eye:
Copernicus and Galileo and Newton and even Einstein would have had a far easier time if they were able to blog. Because good snowballs can’t be suppressed.
the corporate wine blogging manifesto
I've been asked to write this piece of marketing collateral for Stormhoek, explaining the Stormhoek story : The bloggers' wine freebie, The 100 Geek Dinners etc etc.
Part of the remit is that the document is aimed at people in the wine trade who are not only NOT web savvy, but downright hostile to all thing internet in general. These people have never heard of blogs or The Cluetrain, let alone Clay Shirky. Even AOL is a bit too "out there" for some of them.
It's easy selling the idea of social media to people who like the internet in the first place. But to people who don't?
Anyway, I had a bash at writing Page One:
The Stormhoek Story: A incredible global conversation is taking place that will decided the future success or failure of all products, not just in the wine trade, but in all industries.This is just a very rough first draft. It needs to be shorter. But it's not a bad start. More later...So you’re in the wine business. You’re probably wondering what the future of the wine business is (at least if you’re smart, you are).
Guess what? The future not about the usual bumph: terroir, vintage, cork vs screwcap, Sauvingnon vs Pinotage, Australian vs Argentine, hipster labels vs old-fashioned labels etc. Nobody cares.
The future of the wine business is- actually- the same as the future of all business.
The future is, of course, the internet.
But when we say ‘internet’, we’re not talking about the usual suspects: Internet retail. Vinyard websites. All the stuff we’ve seen before. Those are just virtual storefronts. Little more than electronic brochures. Those are irrelevant.
The web is not about techonolgy. The web is not about a new media to market one’s wares in. And the web is certainly not about you.
Remember the following line, first coined by Jeff Jarvis; you will need to rely on it for the rest of your life:
The web is about people.in more layman's terms, consider the words of Clay Shirky:
The cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.The end result of this is, wiith the advent of the internet and various forms of social software, suddenly highly savvy networks of people are springing up in their millions. They’re talking to each other. With or without your permission.[www.shirky.com]
It used to be, you could buy a piece of media, hire some advertising professionals to polish the message till it was nice and shiny, and deliver it to as many people as you wanted, in whatever form you wanted.
But suddenly, you’re now irrelevant.
Now, people can simply ignore you. And they’ve gotten very good at ignoring you. Nobody cares about you or your wine. They’d rather talk to their friends and contacts about wine, they don’t need to hear it from you. They probably think what you have to say is just a lot of advertising-induced lies, anyway. They have better sources of information. And lots of them.
This is a pretty daunting enough prospect, if you’re a large player in the wine market, with millions of cases shipped annually, and a marketing budget the size of the GDP of Lithuania.
But what if you’re like us, Stormhoek, a small South African vineyard in the middle of nowhere, thousands of miles away from your mainly British and American customers, with no marketing budget to speak of, with scores upon scores of worthy competitors, all fighting like hungry rats for ever-decreasing share of the market?
What do you do?
June 14, 2006
a permanent state of stressed-out exhaustion
Started work at 9am yesterday. Quit work at 3am this morning. Getting all ready for Thomas' trip to America [He leaves tomorrow].
I know the world I love, the world I want to belong to. Seems the price of membership is a permanent state of stressed-out exhaustion. Fair enough.
June 12, 2006
why does a dog
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
Techcrunch is one year old today. Happy Birthday!
Steve Rubel gives a good run-down on Web 2.0's greatest publishing phenom of the last year:
The path Michael Arrington followed can be replicated by anyone else and it proves that blogs can eat into the mainstream media ad dollars and eyeballs. All you need to do is: a) identify a high interest topic online that currently does not have a blog tracking it, b) write about it very actively and do it well and c) don't be afraid to promote it. Today Michael is viewed as a critical newsmaker. He breaks big stories on his own right and with the help of PR people.Congratulations, Michael!
gapingschwag
NB: If you see a gapingvoid cartoon that you like, and you fancy it as a piece of schwag, all you have to do is download the high-resolution image off this site, then upload it here onto Cafepress. Easy.
[Though I'd prefer it if you read my licensing terms first, of course.]
"companies are schwag"
[Speaking of schwag, I've made a commemorative "Scoble's Leaving" ceramic tile drinks coaster over at Cafepress.]
Doc Searls on Robert Scoble's recent departure from Microsoft:
One sad thing for Microsoft about losing Scoble was that they couldn't pay him what he was worth to the company, which will remain incalculably large — even after he's gone. In fact, there is no HR metric for figuring the worth of a worker like Scoble, whose value to Microsoft was due more to his work outside the company's walls than inside them. Ironically, Robert Scoble may turn out to have been the most human resource Microsoft ever had.Their loss, most definitely.
I like Microsoft. I'd go work for them, if they were ever short of a few disruptive bloggers, and the price was very, very right. I doubt they would hire me, though. My days of being governed by HR metrics are long gone.
just because the world is changing
[Click on image to enlarge/download/print etc. Licensing terms here etc.]
