March 23, 2008
"social gestures beget social objects"
When I was last in San Francisco a few weeks ago, my good friend, Shel Israel interviewed me, as part of his new FastCompany.com gig. We talked about "Social Objects", with a heavy emphasis on "Social Markers". It was a fun time. Thanks for the opportunity, Shel!
more notes from west texas 2
[Cathedral Mountain, 6,122ft. Picture taken bu my father, about 20 miles South of Alpine, Texas.]
It's been just over a week since I got back to Alpine after SXSW Interactive. Here are some random notes.
1. I've not much to report, to be honest. I've deliberately been living as slowly and quietly as possible. I think a lot of us are still recovering from SXSW.
2. I have no idea how long I will stay in Alpine. All that I know is that I don't want to leave right now. I have no plans of going anywhere else, except on business.
3. It looks like I found me an office. Sul Ross [the local university] rents out some office units as part of some sort of "Entrepreneur Center" program that they're running. Fax, photocopier, all that good stuff. Cost: about $150 dollars a month.
4. Housing is not a problem, either. I was staying with my dad and stepmom, but recently I moved into a cheap and cheerful motel. Hotels, Motels and rented places go for between $500 and $1000 a month, which after London and New York, is not something that worries me too much. Housing prices are about $80-$150K, which again, compared to what I was used to seeing in Europe, is peanuts.
5. If I decide to stay for a long time, I'll need to buy me a car. I'm thinking a used pickup truck, the kind that runs forever. The local classified ads are awash with them. In the meantime, I just placed an order for a new Raleigh from the local bike shop. The town is pretty flat, and only two miles at its widest, so getting around isn't much of a problem.
6. Dad and I had a fun time a few days ago, driving up to Odessa, Texas, 140 North East of here. He had a doctor's appointment up at the Medical Centre there, and I had to go to the Social Security office to get me a new copy of my Social Security card, in order that I could reapply for my old Texas driver's license. Including the wait in line, I was in and out of the office inside ten minutes, I kid you not. Could you imagine how long that would have taken had I been in New York, London, or Paris?
7. About thirty miles North of Alpine you start leaving the mountains and start entering the cotton fields. Flat landscapes that seem to go on forever, interrupted only by telegraph poles. They're growing some cotton up there, but a lot of the field are not being currently used- the current high price of oil makes running the irrigation machinery prohibitive. A bit further North and you start entering oil country ands the Odessa environs. Oil Derrecks, Pumpjacks, and lots of semi-ghost town with disused mobile homes and spare parts lying around the place. It takes a lot more people to set up the oil fields than it takes to maintain them, so abandoned dwellings are a pretty common sight.
8. Up in this part of the world [50-100 miles North of Alpine] the one thing you don't see is a lot of cattle. There simply isn't enough water for them in those parts, so I'm told.
9. Once you enter oil country you are immediately hit by the rather unpleasant smell of the oil and gas fields. The locals like the smell, though. "Smells like money," as they like to say.
10. There's not much I can tell you about Odessa. On first impression, it's not a pretty place. About 100,000 people. Pick-up trucks, Strip malls, bungalows, oil industry stuff and little else. The aforementioned medical center and the current high price of oil seem to be the main economic engine.
11. We never made it to Midland, the next town over from Odessa, about 30 miles East. That's where George W. Bush calls home. I'm told it's not too different from Odessa, only a bit more upscale; Generally it's regarded as the nicer town of the two. This is where you catch a plane if you're heading East, from Midland-Odessa airport. If you're heading to the West Coast from Alpine, you fly out of El Paso.
12. While Dad went for his doctor's appointment, after I had gotten my Social Security business settled, to my delight I found a Starbucks only a block or two away. So I ordered my usual Grande Latte, hooked up my computer to the internet and entered the same world I enter when I'm in Alpine, New York or London. The internet has become the great leveler for me.
13. Though hardly the most authentic place in the world, if you want cheap and cheerful Italian cuisine in Odessa, you could do a lot worse than go to Corino's. The people there are pretty friendly.
14. My intention is, once I get settled [Place to live, office, car, driver's license etc], my plan is to go into overdrive for a couple of months. I have a lot of work needing done.
15. Happy Easter, Everybody!
March 16, 2008
cartooning gigs
[A riff on the Blue Monster cartoon. Recently commissioned by Microsoft etc.]
Recently I've been busying myself with a new series of cartoons I'm doing for Microsoft. The cartoon above is one of them.
Microsoft is awash with both [A] complicated products and [B] complicated ideas, so they often use my cartoons internally to communicate them in a more, shall we say, digestible form.
I'm also talking to other large companies about doing the same kind of thing with them. The work suits me. I like the challenge, I like the mental algebra, I like being able to interface with hardcore, real-world problems. And it can all be done in Alpine, Texas, Cumbria or wherever via the internet, without me having to book an airline ticket and hotel.
If this is something that would be useful for your company, feel free to drop me an e-mail.
Thanks.
[I'm still doing the public speaking and appearance gigs, of course. More info here. Thanks Again.]
March 15, 2008
hugh & the rabbi, episode 3
Johnnie, Mark and Rabbi Pinny all gathered for our semi-regular podcast. It was so far my favorite show, by a long shot. I think we're slowly getting the hang of it. Rock on.
The Show Notes:
The conversation begins with a document from 2002 that Mark e-mailed us all, entitled “Beyond Selfishness”. So why did he send it to us?
1.10 Mark: I was recommended this document a few years ago by a client, and I found it really expressed passionately the ideas I was starting to have, about where we were going wrong with Capitalism.
1.45 Mark: The document contradicted certain very common ideas in business- “The Heroic Manager”, or “Shareholders are the only people who matter in a business” etc.
2.18 Pinny: The document reflects something much larger going on in our times: The ever-growing need and demand for people, especially leaders, to be more “transparent” and “accessible”.
3.15 Hugh asks the question: Do y’all see this happening all over in real life, or is this something most of us are just paying lip service to?
3.40 Pinny: It’s something that really started with the internet companies, but spreading outwards. Mentions Mark Zuckerberg: Somebody worth $15billion yet still shows up for work wearing no socks.” The big companies will still stay the same, but the change will come from the newer, younger companies.
4.30 Hugh talks about a conversation he had with a few people inside Microsoft- how there’s a generation gap growing within the company, between the Old Guard, and the new generation of Microsofties, who see their company in much more open, organic terms.
5.45 Johnnie talks about how all these “Web 2.0” tools [that simply were not available 10 years ago] allow people to conduct business on a far more organic, natural and HUMAN manner, in a nimble and agile way that big companies simply will not be able to compete with. “The Revolution will not be televised, because it’s already happening around us.”
8.00 Pinny: The internet allows human beings to “Tap into the Infinite”.
9.15 Hugh: I’ll always go back to Euan Semple’s comment: “What makes the internet interesting is Love.”
9.30 Mark: The internet is about people, not technology, not machines. However the “machine” is the abiding metaphor for business and government.
11.00 Hugh asks Pinny: Being a guy who has a large business, how do you balance the need to “Grasp The Infinite” with the more prosaic realities of running a business- meeting payroll, paying suppliers etc etc.
11.30 Pinny: The way to make the balance to understand what the “Purpose” of the business is, and then make sure the wheels underneath are running.
12.30 Pinny tells a great story about “The Fifteen Hats”, when he, his brother and two others first started the company. They literally put eleven hats on the table, each one labelled with one of the eleven executive job titles, and then they shared the hats out amongst themselves. Now Pinny’s company has 100 employees, ergo “100 Hats”. In 8 years, their company has never had one person quit. Which for an internet company, is a “pretty big deal”.
13.50 Mark: Every manger would LOVE to have their employees loving their work, love coming into work, but simply won’t have this by treating people like “numbers” or a “piece of resource”.
14.20 Johnnie: How we’re saddled with this idea of “Homo Economicus”. If we’re not going to buy into the “Rational Man” model, then we have to get used to talking about concepts like “Love” and “The Infinite”.
15.45 Pinny: I believe the companies that “get this message across” are going to be the ones that will succeed.
16.25 Hugh asks Johnnie: So when we’re talking about things like “Love” and whatnot, how do you educate your big corporate clients with all this stuff?
17.00 Johnnie: I remain optimistic. Most people who work at a company know the company works not because of their rigid models, but people’s willing ness to work around those models. Most people are “just one intervention away” from a more human relationship with the company.
18.30 Hugh talks about The Blue Monster, and how it came about. “I didn’t invent something for them to believe, a-la mission statement, I just articulated a belief that was already there.”
20.45 Mark talks about working with a client of his, a large TV company. How he got them to articulate a shared sense of purpose, rather than a “mission statement”.
22.00 Hugh: If you look at all the great brands that have emerged in the last 2 decades [Nike, Starbuck’s etc], one thing they have in common: They’re all GREAT at “articulating belief”.
22.30 Mark: A lot of the current marketing schtick is about imposing something that isn’t there. Which what makes so much of it false, shallow and objectionable in the real world. Maybe the job of marketers in the future will be to “articulate what’s already there”.
23.00 Hugh talks about working on the McDonald’s advertising account in 1997. “Stay Hungry”. Conclusion: The stuff that makes companies interesting is the same stuff that makes the Bible, the Torah and the Iliad interesting.
27.00 Pinny: When a company grows, the thing they must remember is the beliefs they had that got them there in the first place. Not always an easy thing to do.
28.00 Mark talks about the disaster of Quaker Oats buying the Snapple brand. The got into serious trouble because “They didn’t know how to handle a company built on belief”.
31.00 Mark: The marketing myth of “Best Practices”.
31.45 Pinny tells a great story about one of his favorite marketing campaigns. Advertising for Zappos Shoes, inside the plastic buckets they use in American airport security, of all places.
33.00 Hugh talks about being a Jeff Buckley fanboy re. Playfulness and virtuosity- a powerful combo- in marketing, as much as in music etc.
35.30 Hugh talks about “Innocent Drinks”, a brand that comes up pretty much in 90% of all British branding conversations. “Minor Interventions of Happiness”.
36.50 Pinny talks about “The A-Ha! Moment” in all very successful [and very unsuccessful] marketing campaigns.
37.15 Johnnie: “The Tyranny of Big Ideas”. Talking about Improv Theatre: “When you try to take too much control, you take away the humanity from the process.”
38.50 Pinny: “There are no Big Ideas. There are only Little Ideas.”
40.43 [FINIS]
March 13, 2008
english cut documentary
Just before Christmas, the groovy cats at Border TV made a half-hour documentary of my frequent partner-in-crime, Savile Row tailor, Thomas Mahon. [The full Google video page is here.]
Cumbria for me seems a long way away from Alpine, Texas at the moment. Nonetheless, seeing Thomas in his element [Take it from me- they did a really splendid job of capturing his schtick] made me feel so proud to be part of the adventure. I highly urge you to give it a watch. Look for me making a cameo appearance during the dinner party in the second half. Rock on.
[Bonus:] I kid you not: One of the best Ladies' tailors IN THE WORLD is currently in NYNY till March 18th. Hurrah!
the quiet life of a writer yak yak yak
I was an English major back in college. From the age of nineteen, for over a decade I devoured books. Thousands of them. And I always liked hearing the true-life stories about the authors who penned them.
I remember well, hearing all about two of my favorite writers, Hemingway and Graham Greene.
Though their books were very different from each other’s, their daily routines were quite similar, so I heard.
Basically, they’d live somewhere cheap, quiet and relatively conducive to getting a lot of writing done. The Florida Keys and Cuba in Hemingway’s case, the South of France in Greene’s.
They’d get up early each morning, then write diligently till noon.
Then they’d head for their local café, drink gallons of booze for hours on end, and stagger home late at night.
Then they’d do the same thing the next day. And the next. And the next. For years on end. Women came and went, friends came and went, children came and went, money and fame came and went, but the daily writing-booze combo remained the great constant.
I’m not sure I like the idea of staggering home drunk every night, but as somebody who likes to write, likes his beer, and likes the simple life, I can’t say I find their overall Modus Operandi unappealing.
I guess I’m currently finding my own equivalent here in Alpine, Texas, minus the copious amount of booze. In the back of my mind, I know one of the main reasons I worked so hard these last few years, is because I knew that one day this is exactly what I’d want to end up doing, far away from the big city, the madding crowd. And so here I am.
March 12, 2008
back in alpine, texas
[Me wearing my "thug hat" at the very groovy "Marketing without Marketing" panel Dave Parmet put together for SXSW. Details here. Nice to see Tara Hunt et al in such excellent form].
I got back to Alpine, Texas late last night utterly exhausted, but woke up this morning totally feeling like a million dollars, very glad to be back.
Since I left Alpine on February 26th, my travels have taken me to San Francisco, San Jose, Miami, New York, New Jersey, Miami and Austin. Anyone who follows my Twitter feed will know it's been fun and interesting times.
But now, as they say in Scotland, it's "Back to old clothes and porridge". Got a lot of work on my plate. My original plan was to return to England after these travels, but I think I'll stay in Alpine instead for the next wee while, and finish off this one big writing project that's been taking up a lot of my brainspace these days.
Alpine has everything I need at the moment. Peace and quiet, a decent cafe and a university library where it's easy to get a lot of work done. So that's me for now. Rock on.
March 11, 2008
goodbye austin
[Me with two really good pals of mine, Jemima Kiss and John T. Unger at the impromptu Twitter meet-up, Friday afternoon.]
I writing this from an airport lounge, en route back to Alpine, Texas. Head's too full of stuff to write coherently. Will get back to Alpine, Texas and re-group. Rock on.
March 8, 2008
drawing cartoons at sxsw
[Valleywag blogged this Hughcard yesterday. Rock on.]
I'm blogging this from the Bloghouse here at SXSW Interactive.
Come on by and I'll draw you an original "Hughcard".
We're on Level 3, Room Seven. It's already filling up with people so come soon.
[Everyone's favorite CFA, Loren Feldman at 1938media videoed me last night.]
[Photo from the Bloghaus]
March 7, 2008
greetings from austin, texas
[The SXSWi 2008 schwag bag, designed by Yours Truly. Photo courtesy of Laughing Squid.]
Arrived in Austin late last night for the SXSW Interactive Conference. Blogging light for the next couple of days- so is Everybody Else, it seems. It's only jsut beginning and already it's going crazy [in a good way].
The way to keep up with it all is to follow people on Twitter. You can follow me here, you can follow the Bloghaus gang here, and there's a SXSWi central Twitter aggregator over here on Hashtags.
March 5, 2008
heading for sxsw
I'm writing this from the comfort of my friend's condo in South Beach, Miami. Chilling here for a couple of days.
Tomorrow I'm headed for Austin for the annual SXSW Interactive conference, probably the most fun conference in America. Then I'm headed back to Alpine, Texas on Tuesday, where I'm going to be staying for the next wee while, finishing off a large writing project that I've been working on.
My decision to go to Austin was pretty last-minute, so I haven't really made any big plans. I've been invited to speak on a couple of panels, the details of which are still be worked out. The other thing I plan on doing is hanging around the Bloghaus for most of the duration, drawing cartoons live and handing them out to people. So if you're in town and fancy an original "Hughcard", come pay me a visit. Details here on Stephanie Agresta's blog.
SXSW is usually a bit of a madhouse, so the best way to keep track of what I'm doing, as always, is to follow me on Twitter.
See y'all in Texas!