Monthly Archive for March, 2009

Dangerous diversity?

Published
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Jemima Gibbons
on March 24, 2009
in Miscellaneous
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The photographer Lee Miller has always been a glamorous figure (modelling for Vogue before deciding that her skills were better suited to the other side of the camera), and the contents of the MI5 file on Miller, released into the public domain this month, only work to accentuate her status as a Twentieth Century icon.

Sanchia Berg recently reported on MI5’s monitoring of Miller for BBC Radio Four’s Today programme.

MI5 opened a file on Miller in summer 1941 and monitored her for 15 years until 1956. A colleague of Miller’s at Vogue had told the UK government that she had communist sympathies.

Miller was never a member of the Communist party but lived the sort of lifestyle that was considered odd at the time; the MI5 file opens with what, today, looks like a stream of non-sequiturs:

“I have been told by a friend on the staff of Vogue magazine that Lee Miller is a strong communist. She keeps a very open house and has a very varied circle of friends. I think lives in Hampstead.”

The Special Branch also interviewed Lee Miller’s boss, Harry Yoxhall, who confirmed that: “She is eccentric and indulges in queer food and queer clothes.”

It’s fascinating to see how establishment views have changed. Whatever the problems of our post-modern, multicultural society, at least we no longer live in an age where having a “varied circle of friends” is considered subversive.

In appreciating the positives about the world we live in now (and, despite its many flaws, there is probably a lot to be grateful for), it’s good to remember the trailblazing courage of a woman like Miller.

Not only was she intelligent and talented, she lived a life that many women, even today, could only dream of: working as a respected photographer (and securing lovers and husbands) in New York, Cairo, Paris and London.

She was ambitious and, certainly for a while at least, unstoppable. Her circle of friends included Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst and other leading surrealist artists.

Technical expertise was something Miller had in bucketfuls. She knew how to use various different cameras, she knew how to frame a shot, she knew how to get exactly the right type of lighting.

Because we are shaped so much by the image of ourselves we see in media and entertainment, women in technical roles that shape our popular culture are particularly important. Miller’s unique humour and character shine through in her pictures, so I think it’s important to remember her on Ada Lovelace Day.

Miller’s photos are copyrighted so I can’t use them here but an online archive of her work is maintained by her son, Antony.

Friends in different places

Published
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Jemima Gibbons
on March 21, 2009
in Listening
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As cries continue for Gordon Brown to apologise for flawed financial leadership over the past ten years, and for ex-CEOs of the heavily indebted banks to pay in some way (usually financial) for the state in which they’ve left their previously profitable companies, it’s worth bearing in mind that it’s not just individuals but the system that’s at fault.

As Ruth Sutherland wrote in the Observer recently:

“The crunch is not a Manichean battle between good and evil, or a narrative of hubris and nemesis. It is the result of an intellectual failure on a grand scale - the wrong-headed belief that markets are efficient and rational - coupled with a web of self-congratulatory and self-interested links between financiers and politicians.”

Sutherland talks about the “dangerous group-think of the Bush/Blair years”. She makes so many excellent points that it’s probably best you just click through to the article, but the one that resonates most is that above: “the web of self-congratulatory and self-interested links”.

In short, the bankers gave the politicians thousands of new jobs, a surge in tax revenues and the economic feel good factor; in return, the politicians gave the bankers influence (eg: Sir Ronald Cohen, both advisor and donor to New Labour) and knighthoods (eg, Sir Alan Greenspan who “hilariously” as Ruth Sutherland points out was knighted in 2002 for his “contribution to global economic stability”).

As Sutherland points out, any economist worth his salt and therefore qualified to criticise had usually been offered a lucrative position on the board of an investment bank, so a conflict of interest was inevitable. Clever.

What’s the best way to beat this group-think? Sutherland suggests a re-introduction of the checking process that used to be performed by civil servants (“in more sober times”):

“One simple practice the financial world could adopt is the idea in post-Iraq intelligence circles of an official devil’s advocate to check and challenge policy.”

And the implications for business?

When Bill Gates hired Robert Scoble in 2003 as a “technical evangelist” and producer the Channel 9 video division, probably the last thing he expected was that Scoble was going to start criticising his employer in public.

By the time Scoble left Microsoft in June 2006, his blog, Scobleizer, was one of the most popular in the tech world with millions of hits every month.

Via his blog, Scoble was openly critical of Microsoft; one example was in January 2006 when Microsoft shut down a Chinese researcher’s MSN blog because it was critical of the Chinese government:

“The behavior of my company in this instance is not right…Guys over at MSN: sorry, I don’t agree with your being used as a state-run thug.”

He also blogged freely about his love of Apple Computer and admiration for Google.

Gates let the blog run because he realised the importance of dissent. The fact he let Scoble criticize actually made Microsoft look good.

As a journalist for Forbes.com wrote at the time of Scoble’s departure:

“One man has shown how a blog, plain-spoken and irreverent in its tone, could be a tool to significantly help soften the monopolistic bullying image of a corporate giant like Microsoft.”

We are now coming to the double bluff endgame: it’s not so much the bad press, as how you handle it. As Clay Shirky pointed out in his recent talk at the LSE, consumers are becoming media-savvy: Barack Obama’s campaign was not harmed so much as bolstered by the deluge of media tributes to him: some well-done, some badly-executed. The American public knew that Obama was not directly responsible for these tributes, and it knew not to blame him directly for them.

The importance of allowing all voices to flourish: however critical, however inept, cannot be over-stated. Trying to stamp such comments out, or cover them up, is like using a garden hose to fight a forest fire. And these voices are worth listening to, because one day they might even come up with some solutions that could be of interest (see the we20 project for one such example). Rather than worry about having friends in high places, maybe it’s time we all started cultivating friends in different places.

Regenerate: collaborate

Published
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Jemima Gibbons
on March 20, 2009
in Sharing
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A century ago, around the time the block of flats I live in was built, the Regents Canal a few streets away would have been seen as a massive nuisance. The canal boats, carrying bulk goods such as coal and grain, were powered by coal-burning furnaces which spewed out dust and pollution. All day long, people would have heard the barge men shouting out, not just to each other but also to the horses who trotted along the towpath, helping pull the boats. And the waterway itself would have been clogged with sewage: industrial flotsam and jetsam, as well as debris from the cleaning out of cages at the nearby London Zoo.

Today, after years of neglect, the industrial area around Kings Cross is finally opening up. The canal, while not completely free of rubbish and the occasional oil spill, is a muddy but natural brown; there are even fish. We’re about to have a dazzling new piazza just behind Kings Cross station, with an expanse of white paving stones and fountains, and gentle steps sloping down to the canal-side; previously, the canal bank was choked with weeds and sealed off behind fences of corrugated iron.

The industrial age gave us smoke- and chemically-damaged buildings, polluted water-ways, contaminated land and smog-filled air. Canals, railways and factories were, as much as possible, sectioned off from residential areas. The more money you had, the further away you hoped to be from any overt sign of industry. But much of this is changing now. All over the UK, factories and warehouses have been converted into offices and living spaces. The areas alongside waterways are being opened up, with walks, open spaces and parks replacing what was previously wasteland. Sites from the Victorian gasholders at Kings Cross to Battersea Power Station have become much loved symbols of our national heritage.

The Granary Square development behind Kings Cross seems a good metaphor for 21st century business. As industry (albeit slowly) becomes cleaner and greener, post-modern urban design is all about opening up and re-connecting. Instead of silos, the future is one of hybrid work/life spaces. We are beginning to realise the inter-relatedness of things. The way forward is one of collaboration and co-existence.

In this week’s Media Guardian, Jeff Jarvis talks about a new approach to community journalism at the New York Times. The Times has dispatched two of its correspondents to communities in New Jersey and Brooklyn. The job of the reporters will be not so much to break stories as to build relationships, working with community leaders at grassroots level, as well as local blogging sites:

“All these parties must collaborate, not compete,” writes Jeff. “They must create complementary content that fills out their local news worlds so that each of them adds value and stands out for it [...] The days of one news organisation owning a town and its news are over; no one can afford to do that any more. Instead, if these experiments succeed, they will do so by collaborating to create a new network - a new ecosystem - of local news.”

This approach is part of the new “long tail” trend of “hyperlocal” (which Jeff describes as “the ability to serve readers and small advertisers in highly targeted geographic niches”). The assumption is that stakeholders within these niches are dependent on each other for survival and therefore co-operation is essential.

This is a hypothesis which is being put to the test not just at a local level and within communities of interest, but also within markets.

Why we need “creative” thinking

Published
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Jemima Gibbons
on March 14, 2009
in News
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As a follow up to the last post announcing “Cre@te we20″, just thought I should put in a pointer to this manifesto by economist Umair Haque: a great indication of why even financiers might - at last - be willing to listen to the opinions of a bunch of creatives.

Cre@te we20

Published
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Jemima Gibbons
on March 13, 2009
in News
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Hot news!! Cass Creatives will be teaming up with the we20 project to bring creative input and ideas to the G20 – and we need your help!

We’ve booked the restaurant space at Cass Business School on Friday 3 April from 6pm for an evening of fine wine, great conversation and – we hope – fantastically creative collaboration.

The aim is to draw deep on our experience and knowledge in the creative sector to see if we can come up with some original and workable ideas for helping to solve the economic and social problems facing the world today (small ask, then).

Using the we20 format, we’ll get together in small groups (eg, 3-8 people) to talk about the issues and come up with some potential answers. Founders of the we20 project will be on hand to introduce the event and generally help out.

Teams can be made up of friends and/or be representative of a specific company or brand. All ideas can then be put forward to the we20 website, which has a direct link with decision makers at the G20 summit in London.

So, enough of that moaning into the early hours at your Soho members’ club about how our world leaders don’t have a clue. Now’s your chance to actually tell them! As an added bonus, the name of your company or product may well be seen by millions of people.

It should be a fun evening and we hope you can be there! As always, admission will be free to all Cass Creatives. So either join the Facebook group now, or email b[dot]sawtell[at]city[dot]ac[dot]uk to get signed up.

More info to follow, including booking details, but put the date in your diaries!

Twitter - the new rock and roll!

Published
by
Jemima Gibbons
on March 4, 2009
in Miscellaneous
. 0 Comments

I’m thrilled to see Oliver James, Arik Sigman and others taking the effort to slag off Twitter specifically and social networking in general in the mainstream media over the past couple of weeks. If you’ve missed any of the pieces, Lloyd Davis has done a great write up and Johnnie Moore posted an excellent Newsnight clip.

The idea that these tools can rot your brain is absolutely genius and a topnotch PR company couldn’t have done a better job in getting the word out. If any ‘kids’ had doubts about using Twitter and/ or other social tools; if for some reason, they hadn’t heard of them or simply weren’t interested, now they have the impetus they need to find out more.

Where would Elvis have been if parents across the American Mid-West hadn’t thought his hip moves subversive? What would have happened to The Sex Pistols if they’d taken all that effort to swear at Bill Grundy on live TV and no-one had minded? Would Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax have made it to the top of the UK charts if DJ Mike Read hadn’t branded the track “disgusting” and ensured an airplay ban on BBC Radio One?

With all this negative press, Twitter loses nothing. Instead it gains a credible place in popular culture.