At a recent panel session at the Turing Festival, I commented on how the use of Forums had diminished lately, seeing them replaced by social media alternatives – namely Facebook and LinkedIn groups, this was instantly “tweeted” by a few people:

@iandubya Ian Watson
#tfest businesses increasingly not running forums on their one sites – using Linkedin, Facebook etc.. @nsdesign
26 Aug

Following the conference, I was contacted by Barry Hynd who runs the excellent Scottish Business Forums, and he asked me to explain in more detail about what I meant, explaining that his own forums had been experiencing slower growth, and was therefore looking at new ideas to boost usage.

I sent Barry a quick email, and he kindly gave me permission to publish that email here..  so what follows below is a quick summary on why Forums are Dead, and why they will live on…  in my personal opinion of course!..

The issue of Forums losing traction is a tough one.. 

to be honest – that “tweet” where I’m cited as saying “forums don’t work – do it on facebook”, was specifically meant in regard to “corporate forums” – ie: forums/discussion boards run by companies, to get their members/customers/stakeholders to engage with them..  eg: the “Pizza Hut” forum (assuming there is/was such a thing!)…

Not to be confused with forums with a somewhat independent slant to them, where the focus is on a shared niche/topic – such as “Scottish business”. For that I do think there’s still a place for them..  however – saying that – I can see more and more “communities” moving to Facebook groups, or LinkedIn groups, some of which are thriving, while traditional forums are losing traffic and interest… 

I think it all comes down to the fact that “I’m on Facebook”, so if I find you there, it’s easy and convenient to talk to you, whereas with YOUR forum,you’re making me play by YOUR rules, and I have to remember to visit YOUR website, and YOUR login…”

Does that make any sense to you?  I’m not saying there’s no place for forums, but everything I see (and it’s been going this way for some considerable time), is that the traffic is moving on to social channels, so the communities need to move there too to ensure a continued engagement…

Am I right or wrong?  Are Forums evolving to be just another subset of the big Social Media Channels?

Think about these, discuss them with colleagues, or write your thoughts and answers in comments…

 1. What will the “essential function” be that transforms QR codes from a nice idea into something most people use every day?

 2. Will newspaper paywalls succeed or eventually be dismantled and regarded as a failure?

 3. What will social media look like 5 years from now? Will Facebook,Twitter and Google+ still exist? Who’ll be biggest? How will they have changed?

 4. Tell me about one Tweet that sticks in your mind.

 5. Am I right to be slightly reluctant about putting everything “in the cloud”?

Jessica Ennis wants to win a gold medal at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

That’s her goal and I’m convinced she’ll achieve it.

What’s interesting is the work she’s doing right now in order to make sure she does.

We’ve had some insight into her regime these last few days because she’s given some interviews to promote the event.

Alongside all the gruelling training sessions and careful diet she sticks to, what’s fascinating me is her mental preparation.

There’s still more than a year to go until that heptathlon gets underway but even now, Ennis is being incredibly disciplined in her thinking. 

In an interview with The Guardian she revealed she hasn’t let herself picture the stadium yet, but “probably will next year but not until the latter stages before the competition”.  Note how specific she’s being about this – she’s actually decided when she’ll allow herself to start thinking about it.  There’s a level of detail and a commitment to the decisions she’s made which puts her apart from most of us.

She also made it clear that despite the attention and comments she gets in the street, from the media and even her fiancée at home she firmly keeps her focus. “I do not think about it” she says.

I’ve never sat in front of a life coach but I’ve thumbed through enough books in Waterstones to know that “positive thinking”, “visualisation” and “goal setting” can be big parts of achieving success in sport, business and life in general.

But that interview with Jessica Ennis really hammers home the discipline required in your thinking to get what you want, even months in advance of a particular event.

Without turning ourselves into machines, there’s a lot we can learn from her and her Team GB colleagues.

What must children make of this phone hacking scandal and all the controversy surrounding News International, the methods some journalists use to get stories and the relationship between the media and politicians?

“First News” is a newspaper aimed at 14 to 17  year olds and it’s covering the story in depth with a profile of Rebekah Brooks “the woman at the heart of the hacking scandal”, details of the resignations from The Met and how all this is making life uncomfortable for the Prime Minister. 

BBC Newsround is also covering the story with its usual excellent journalism and although they might sometimes give the impression they’re only interested in mobile phones and hideous music made with auto-tune you can be sure our young people know exactly what’s going on with this.

When I was that age the fall of communism and the end of apartheid were two of the biggest stories. Me and my friends grew up watching the world become a fairer and more open place with the Berlin Wall coming down and the release of Nelson Mandela having a massive impact. Both these events were considered impossible just a few months before they happened.

As a result my generation grew up taking it for granted that no-one would be discriminated against because of the colour of their skin.  While some parents and grandparents remember a world where certain words and attitudes might have been tolerated or even acceptable, for the vast majority of us, it’s cut and dried and we quite rightly have zero tolerance of racism.

So what do changing attitudes and the current scandal mean for newspapers?

Well, they face a battle to get children to read them in the first place because the whole concept of buying something that contains stories that don’t interest them is entirely alien to young people. But even more than that I believe the adults of tomorrow will place a premium on honesty and take it for granted in the way I take it for granted that no-one should be discriminated against because of the colour of their skin.

This is a generation of people prepared to share everything about themselves on Facebook. They’re growing up expecting everyone to know where they are, what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, even when this ends up causing them embarassment or gets them into trouble.

Yes, some will hit 18 and “clean up” their on-line profiles; in fact there’s evidence some of the recent Facebook profile deletions may be students coming out of their degrees and panicking about what potential employers might discover.

But overall young people are developing an expectation that they themselves, adults, businesses and most certainly the media should be absolutely honest, fair and totally open and transparent at all times. In short, it’s getting harder to lie.

The latest crop of music stars like Jesse J, Rihanna, Adele and The Wanted have their own websites and are highly active in social media which means they communicate direct – and sometimes even one to one – with their fans. This means speculative stories about them in tabloids and magazines are worthless.  Why would a 12 year old Nicki Minaj fan bother reading about a relationship she may or may not have had when they’ve already got the official version of events?

Young people aren’t daft – they’re taking all this in and it’s affecting their view of the world.  No longer is the media a big booming powerful influential voice that tells them what’s going on. Instead, it’s considered something slightly grubby and imperfect that they expect to be able to interact with and shape to suit themselves. They want to make it better.

I think there’s an opportunity here for mainstream media businesses to engage with young people now. Think beyond specific publiations or programmes for “kids” or focus groups trying to anticipate what the future’s going to look like. Ask the people who’re going to be calling the shots. Find a group of responsible teenagers and let them get involved in the production of the newspaper or broadcast news bulletins now. Ask what they think of the stories you run and the methods used to generate them. It would make for a highly engaging school project and give you valuable new ideas. You could change the particular young people involved every couple of months.

Better still – and this applies to all businesses, not just the media – why not consider doing something revolutionary… and put a 16 year old on the board.

If the very thought of that just made you scoff, ask yourself why.

And the answer, I suspect, will lead you to discover what you’re doing wrong.

A visit to my in-laws for Sunday lunch yesterday afternoon culminated in the obligatory look through my father in laws’ photos on his Apple TV.

He’s got it plugged into the  big telly in the living room and played his favourite classical music while the slide show worked its way through years of pictures carefully digitised and stored on his Apple iMac in the study upstairs. The most recent pictures had all been taken in the RAW format and when I looked at the sheer number of pictures along with the massive list of songs available through his Apple TV a question occurred to me.

“How much storage does your iMac have?” I asked. “A terabyte”, he replied.

Suddenly I was transported back to the 3rd year Standard Grade Computing Studies class at school. The teacher was expaining storage. He ran through Bits, Bytes, Kilobytes and Megabytes, and when he got to a thousand Megabytes he said “We would call that a Gigabyte but we’ll never have to worry about them.”

It was 1993 and the rest is history.

Then last night I was reading the new Stuff magazine and their feature on Cloud Computing where of course storage is unlimited and in theory ALL  our music, pictures, newspaper articles can be stored forever and accessed at any time, wherever we are, without taking up any space in the physical world.

And then it hit me. Fast forward 40 years from now (hopefully more) when I’m ready to leave this wonderful world. And I hand over to my children and grandchildren the password for my DropBox account.

Then, they’d be able to access every photo I’ve taken, every piece of music I’ve listened to, everything I’ve written, everything I’ve read; in short, the entire digital input and output of my life from now on.

Imagine we’d had that information about our grandparents, many of whom lived at a time when a colour photograph was seen as a precious commodity. How much more would we know about how they lived, their personalities and what went on? And how much richer will our interactions with our own grandchildren be if they’re able to access what made us tick when we were in our prime instead of trying to work us out from hazy memories and what we feel able to share with them.

Will we all live forever in The Cloud?

Hey folks, it’s Thea here again, ruminating about last Friday. You see, our designer Paul and I attended the rather erroneously-named Highland Fling 2011 Web Conference in Edinburgh! (Now, I know I’m only an American, so my geography can be a little patchy, but since when is Edinburgh considered the Highlands?)

I digress…It was an all day event, with an audience of more than a hundred attendees listening to half a dozen speakers from England, Scotland and a fellow American, too.

There we’re half a dozen talks on Content Management Systems (CMS), HTML5, the Apple Look, Accessibility and even a talk on Why Simple Isn’t. (NOTE: Link to slide presentations that I could find at the bottom of the page).

There were all types of people in the room, from designers and developers, to project managers and company directors – all with one thing in common an interest in Web Development.

I started building websites back in 1995, teaching myself HTML in notepad, moving on to tools like Dreamweaver and later CMSs such as WordPress (or our very on NSBuilder).

Over the last twelve years, I’ve worked for some of the top Web Development companies in Scotland, in a variety of roles, and one thing I’ve learned is how universal the communication challenges are in Web Development.

These “challenges” can be both internal (say, between designers and programmers) and external (for instance between company and client). OY! and don’t even get me started on the challenges of designing for clients with committees! (See Gary’s piece for .Net magazine on that subject!)

I suspect anyone who works in Web Development can relate to my assertions…

(<< – - Example from Remy Sharp’s talk of a challenging design to program.)

OVER THE WALL

One of the internal challenges is that programmers often work separate from the designers, and as was described at the Fling, the designs simply flung “over the wall” to the programmer – who then is forced to find a way to make the designs work from a functionality, back end sort of way. This can be problematic (particularly in larger organisations) as illustrated in the picture above. An example of a  busy (cluttered), high-tech, design that was passed over a programmer to code (in this case Remy Sharp, I believe) – presenting him with a nearly-impossible feat.

A way of bridging this gap might be for the designer and programmer to spend a little time, before the project has even begun, discussing the site’s functionality and frameworks. This, would likely, cut down in frustration and hair pulling as the “build” begins.

Incidentally – just because someone is an artist or even a good graphic designer, doesn’t mean they will be competent or even understand how to best design for the Web. (Thankfully our designers are good at all types of design work – print and web and everything else).

So again – a little time discussing the project before the build – might have save a lot of time (and money!) in the long run. (Note: If work is being done separately and remotely then Gmail chat or Skype video calls could be a solution for the two sides to “speak”).

In a firms such as ours, it helps we have no walls separating us, and we’re all able to work side-by-side, discussing any issues as they arise.

CLIENT AND COMPANY

Communication hiccups can also be common between the web development company and the client. Each side needs to be succinct regarding the scope of the project. It’s the client’s responsibility to have a clean, concise, technical scope (a lesson I’m still learning myself!), and it’s the company’s to work out whether that scope is logistic.

The issue here often is the fact that a technical scope is beyond the capabilities of a vast majority of clients. Most won’t have any idea how to write up a technical scope of what the site should be, or look like, etc. They tend to have rough ideas, at best.

The more a client articulate what the site needs to do, suggestions on how it does it, and the end goals, the better it will be for the programmers to help define how this can be done from a technical standpoint.

With regards to the design, if the client can provide a list of sites, that they do and don’t like, then it’s the far more likely the first draft designs will hit, or at least be closer to, the mark.

Both sides can often be guilty of expecting the other to be a mind reader and most of us aren’t psychic in that respect. So if you’re a client having your website developed, provide as much information as you possibly can.

WEB DEVELOPMENT IS LIKE A RARE ART FORM

In my career, I’ve worked on sites that cost a few hundred pounds, all the way up to ones that have cost a quarter of a million pounds, and, funnily enough, these challenges I’ve written above have been prevalent on all of them.

Having run my own site for eleven years, I’ve been the “client” who’s had her site re-designed and relaunched a handful of times in that period. Each time there have been hurdles to surpass in order to re-launch.

As a result, I’ve realised that seldom does the creation (or re-creation) of a site work in a cut and dry fashion, but rather it’s a dance of one step forward then one back – clarifying expectations and gaining understanding.

It can be a frustrating and sometimes painful process (on both sides) – but once that site goes LIVE, and the client is happy, we’re reminded of why we even do the job. That is because it’s a rewarding job (well, in most cases).

The Highland Fling 2011 – was a chance to not only meet with, but also to learn something from, people who share the same passion as us – namely web development and new technologies.

Though as I said, I’ve been in this New Media field for a long time, it’s constantly evolving for all of us.

We’re all inadvertently forced, in this fast-paced, game-changing industry, to continually learn and expand both our technical skills, but also our communication skills.

That’s why I love attending things like the Highland Fling. You pick up something at every event, seminar, conference or talk. It can be a tip, a technique, a website or business contact, but I don’t think there’s been one event I’ve felt was a waste of time.

So here’s to the Highland Fling 2012 – where we’ll do it all again!

And here are a few photos I snapped for NSDesign on the day.

And here are some links to slide presentations (so far – if you were a speaker and have a link – feel free to add in the comments section and I’ll add you)!

Rachel Andrew’s Slides from her talk on CMS

Remy Sharp’s talk on Implementation Interaction

Speakers & Such:

@ highlandwebconf
@ Steve Marshall
@ Rachel Andrew
@ Mike Rundle
@ Remy Sharp
@ Jack Osborne@ Christian Heilmann
and James Edwards

PS: Bios etc here on the Highland Fling site.

Hey y’all, Thea here again, just back from another New Media Breakfast in Glasgow. Today’s fantastic presentation was given by a rather enthusiastic, Jennifer Holloway, of Yorkshire-based Spark Branding.

In a  Malcolm Gladwell sort of way, Jennifer kicked off asking the audience to hazard a guess at a variety questions like where she’s from, how she voted in the last election, if she was in a relationship (and if it was with a man or woman) etc.

The idea being that we form an opinion of someone in the first seven seconds of contact. Incidentally, Holloway asserts this holds true even if that contact is online.

WHAT’S YOUR MESSAGE?

Have a think for a moment about what your profiles, for instance on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook – say about you, your business and your personality.

I don’t think I was alone in leaving the room wondering about what mine say about me, and vowing to do an audit of each before the day’s end.

Much emphasis of Jennifer’s talk was placed on LinkedIn which, of course, most of us realise is a valuable tool for business and networking. (You may have read my post last winter 8 tips for Getting the Most out of LinkedIn…)

We all need to promote our personal brand according to Jennifer and to add personality to it – even on LinkedIn.

PEOPLE WORK (BUY OR DO BUSINESS) WITH PEOPLE THEY LIKE

The talk really boiled down to one, simple premise – “we do business with people we like” (well, at least whenever possible). So we need to be as likable as possible – both online and in person.

The thing is we all need to put our best foot forward, of course we do, but we also need to keep in mind that we’ll never be able to control how other people perceive us.  There will always be people who love us (our company too) and those who loathe us. We don’t have any real control over either group.

“PERSPECTIVE IS A MIRROR NOT A FACT”

One gentleman thought Jennifer’s own profile picture was “shifty” whereas others liked it and even called the picture “cheeky”. It reminds me of my favourite quote that “perspective is a mirror not a fact”.

It would stand to reason that the one most likely to do business with her was the one who found her “cheeky”.

PROFESSIONAL PROFILE PICS

Have a look at your own LinkedIn profile, if you have one that is. Is the profile picture a professional one? It should be.

Leave out the glam wedding day shots, or the one where you’ve cropped out your best mate in a face-lock.

Instead opt for a clear head shot with a hint of personality. [NOTE: One amusing example showed was a woman who looked like a vamped-up sex kitten, but was actually a lawyer; she, arguably, went overboard on trying to show she wasn't a stereotypical lawyer, I'm just sayin'...]

AS FOR THE CONTENT…

As for the words filling your up your profile be sure to add something interesting. For instance, a prime example comes our very own MD’s profile. In addition to talking about all of the ways NSDesign can help you and your business, – there’s a little bit about Gary’s own personality in there too:

“A true people person, Gary’s other interests include magic and juggling, which he often uses to entertain the masses – from local playgroups to conference delegates!”

I love it. This, I’ve no doubt, will be a conversation starter with some people out there.  It won’t interest everyone of course, but it might just the line that causes someone out there to do business with him.

OTHER PROFILE SUGGESTIONS:

• Take a look at your own profile/s online and assess the photo and the copy.
• Put yourself out there and promote yourself (and your business) with “conviction”.

• Ditch any “Old School” worn-out patter, add some personality and  blow your own trumpet (at least a little).

• Find your own balance between under-selling and over selling yourself.

On that note, I’m off to critique and revise my own profiles and maybe add a little about that Road Trip I did back in ’06 – and the documentary about it I hope to one day make…

Hello again everyone it’s Thea here again. Welcome to the third, and final, installment of my Silicon Valley Diary - it’s part 3.

Today I thought I’d talk about having lunch at Google the other day, and share a few reasons why I think Google is so Cool.

Well I’m not the only one, it seems, CNN Money had a poll of the Top 100 places to work and Google ranked number 4 (to be honest, seeing the three above them, I am rather surprised they’re as low as #4).

So I met my friend M on his second to the last day at HQ. Though staying with the company, he’s transferring out to New York (closer to his family) to work with a new team, but still within in their software division. It was a perfect time to meet him again, as he was very relaxed wrapping up work in California and looking forward to his move back east. It meant that I was able to spend extra time with him to eat, chat, take pictures/videos, and wander HQ.

So here are a few reasons why I love the odd trip to Google’s HQ.

1) The Free Food is Awesome!

It’s an obvious choice, this. There are a variety of different cafes to choose from at Google for whatever you fancy:- salads, burgers, Mexican, pizzas – you name, they have it, and all FREE for, not just employees, but also their visitors! There’s been much controversy over this particular area of Google practices, but I, for one, am a fan of the FREE lunch. (Who isn’t?)

2) They’ve Got Cute Bikes

Because Google’s Mountain View HQ is so spread out – they have cute little bikes that you can ride between buildings. That’s an awesome little nugget but some unscrupulous people have been nicking them and then flogging them on Craigslist which to my mind is rather naughty. Plus how obvious would be out riding a coloured Google-Plex bike (red, yellow, green and blue) in your own random neighbourhood?

3) Entrepreneurial Spirits

There is something rather exciting about being surrounded by all these creative and gifted minds. Google, apparently, chooses its candidates through a highly-scientific methodology and approach to picking staff. So you get a sense you’re among greatness, or at least I do, when I’m there. I end up hoping some of that greatness will soak into me through osmosis.

You may love Google or loathe it, but you can’t deny it its successes.

4) Inspirational Setting

The campus is in a natural green like setting (trees, grass etc). There are beach-like volleyball pitches, swimming pools, an organic garden (which provides some of it’s ingredients for their cafes), a bronze T-Rex dinosaur, and a garden filled with nautical-inspired statues.

It seems like it would be rather easy to have a little spot of grass to yourself, in or out of the sun, to work on you work. It reminds me of my own Northern California university days, and that’s a good thing.

5) Google’s Liquid Galaxy 3D Simulator

Arguably the most fun part of the trip to Google was the fifteen or so minutes spent in the lobby. Not only are there cool things to look at, like the hanging plane (aka Spaceship One), but they have the most fun 3D panoramic Google Earth  simulator called Liquid Galaxy. You walk into it, there are panels that wrap around, maybe 100 degrees, and are several feet high (it’s hard to explain but this YouTube video shows it clearly and from the outside).

Most people, apparently I learned, choose to look at their house (which I did too), but really took a 3-D look all around Glasgow as a whole, giving my friend a virtual tour of my fair city.

It’s an absolute blast, if a little dizzy-inducing at times. I wish I had one of these things in my living room!

Anyway check out my ’2-min Tour of Google’ video here to see some of the things I talked about above. Thanks for reading about the little trek to Google’s HQ in Mountain View. It’s worth a little visit if you ever get the chance…

Hey everyone it’s Thea here again. Did you know the name Silicon Valley was first used exactly forty years ago by Don C Hoefler** who was writing a series of articles Silicon Valley USA? Rather surprisingly I didn’t until I heard it at the recent, rather inspirational Innovation Journalism (InJo) conference at Stanford.

Here in “the Valley”, like anywhere really, people love to talk about what excites them – music, movies, television shows and especially technology. So I thought I’d pass on to you what’s excited me this past week – just on the off-chance you’ve not heard about them already. (You may have heard of some of these already, but hopefully one or two will be new to you too!)

CitizenTube.com

This one gets mentioned because of an enjoyable panel talk by the main man Steve Grove at CitizenTube – which is YouTube’s News and Politics channel. “How many of you knew we had a news and politics channel?” he asked and few of us raised our hands.

The idea is that citizens of the world are becoming the news curators by being in the right place at the right time (depending on how you look at it) with their camera phones or video recorders. Incidentally, this was a common theme at the Stanford InJo conference, as on a later talk from CNN’s Marisa Gallagher explained their use of iReporters on Open Story.

None of this is dissimilar to what Sky News and the BBC are doing – what’s interesting to me is the trend of this “citizen journalism”.

TuneIn Radio

TuneIn Radio is a website and has a variety of apps for different platforms. It was recommended to me by a fellow music-loving friend Teri. (NOTE: Teri has around 150 apps on her iPhone and sees more concerts than anyone I’ve ever met, so she was the perfect person to recommend this app to me.)

As we sat outside a little coffee shop in downtown Campbell, I download TuneIn radio onto my iPad and, just for kicks, loaded up BBC Radio Scotland’s Morning Briefing with my NSDesign colleague Colin Kelly and we sat and, well, tuned in.

A rather surreal moment that.

Once Magazine

Now this one is a little different, as it’s not yet launched, but am excited to check it out once it goes live. From the website of the young SF-based firm, Once Magazine is a simple concept based around how great photographs look on the iPad. Not only that, it’s apparently a “viable publishing platform in the digital age calls for a new business model”. While it’s subscription based, they’ll be sharing revenue with the photographers. That’s only part of their business model. So Once is one to watch, I think, especially if you’re keen on “long-form narrative photography”. (Don’t you just love all these new buzz terms for everything?)

Awedeitorium – Aural Happiness

At Stanford, after an interesting panel I got chatting to one the panelists @ Justin Ferrel from the Washington Post’s Director of Digital when the gentleman to my right chimed in about an app he loves called Aweditorium. This little app is engaging for music lovers.

FlipBoard

This particular app is getting more raves than anything I’ve heard in ages! As it was released last summer, you may have heard of of this personalised social magazine already, but it was “news” to me. It’s perfect for all you social media lovers who like reading newspapers and magazines. A truly visual app, it looks amazing on the iPad.

Well that’s just a few of what caught my ear and eye this past week.

Next time, on my Silicon Valley Diary Part 3 – I’ll fill you in on a fun, recent trip to Google’s HQ for a “free lunch” with a friend.

*****************

** The term Silicon Valley is credited to Ralph Vaerst a Central California entrepreneur, but was first used by his friend, a journalist, Don C Hoefler in his column for Electronic News.

Don’t ask us how, but we’ve managed to get hold of a standing ticket for the TAKE THAT gig at Hampden Park, Glasgow on the 24th June 2011  (something to do with Colin kelly – but it’s a long story)! 

The TAKE THAT tour is a complete sell out, and these tickets are fetching over £100 on ebay. 

Maybe you’ve got some friends going to the gig, and you didn’t get a ticket – well now’s your chance to join them, and see them back on stage with Robbie Williams, as well as support act the The Petshop Boys.

To be in with a chance of winning, just make a donation to our “Just Giving” page for the 10K run that we’re doing in June for Cancer Research.  ANY donation (n0 matter how small) will enter you, and anybody who has already sponsored us qualifies automatically! 

http://www.runningsponsorme.org/nsdesign

We’ll pick a winner at random on Friday 10th June – remember that any donation value (just giving has a minimum donation of £2)  enters you, and even if you’re not picked as the winner, you’ll be helping out a great cause that makes a difference to the lives of so many people.

Good luck, and thanks for helping!