Tag Archives: Demos

Get Bettr at BETT

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Thanks to John at the Tweet festival meeting last night in Bristol for this DEMOS-led unconference event for BETT today: “Bettr is an unconference for education focused start-ups and other interested people that is taking place during BETT week in London on the 14th January. In traditional unconference style there is no agenda beyond the education theme and the hope that we can all learn from each other.”

The event is totally free but limited to 60 places.

Sign up at http://bettr.eventbrite.com

More information at http://bettr.org

James I was a wise fool

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“Two years earlier, the Economist invited readers finally to relieve James I of his title, and nominate the wisest fool of the past 50 years.  Maybe, as we take a gulp, and look at the world after the apocalypse, we should look wider than the markets.  What’s the wisdom guiding the crowds?  If the crowd got its recognition in 2006, what will help it avoid becoming a fool by 2060?” (Demos, 3 November)

Hmm, this is about info overload and how individuals/mass deal with it.

Thus my responses in creative/choaotic fashion are taken from recent ‘tweets’:

  • wonder if the credit crunch recession will inspire any positive change in ppl’s mindset? less ‘groupthink’, more ‘i can do’?! Go Palin!
  • too much information? stand back, try a little intuition. don’t drink from the fire hydrant, just catch the drip-drops!
  • my fav word of the credit crunchy moment: *immanent* but also like distinction between ‘bkgrd’ & ‘foregrd’ in probability. Innit?!

The future is orange

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A Demos report (funded by Orange) published today 29 October argues that social networking sites could help companies beat the recession (report pdf).

I liked this extract from the report: “Consultancy firm McKinsey has studied the importance of social or employee networks for businesses. They found in their research that ‘the formal structures of companies… don’t explain how most of their real day-to-day work gets done’.

“They go on to argue that to capture that value, these network relationships need to be formalised in ways that do not interrupt the looseness from which their value emerges.” (Bryan, Matson and Weiss, ‘Harnessing the power of informal employee networks’)

Reminds me of a post I wrote back in July on ‘How to survive a recession social network style’ quoting the example of BMW’s comms strategy from the early 1990s recession.