Journalists and robots – nasty dream

Just woke from a nightmare. I'd submitted a piece to the Guardian and, when it appeared, it contained all sorts of stuff I hadn't written.

I was used to sub-editors gently straightening my prose, but this was wholesale wrecking of my original intent. I didn't mind the historical, factual and statistical additions too much – when not too intrusive, they enriched what I wrote. But it was the wholly new paragraphs that put a commercial spin into the piece that made me hopping mad.

I quickly realised that this was a barmy attempt by the newspaper to earn money from erstwhile advertisers who had found that neither print nor web models were working any more.

Fellow journalists shared my horror – mainly appalled that something was going out with their name on that they hadn't actually written. They were also horrified by the thought that their hard-won reputations for objectivity had been destroyed at a stroke by the insertion of automated 'puff'. We collectively decided to stop writing for any paper that did this to us and to make sure readers knew what they were being served.

As I say, this was a dream. (Really – it happens to me several times every night, but this is probably the first that I thought worth sharing here.) When I woke up, and before I wrote this, I dug into 'robotic writing' and found this piece from The Guardian of all places: And the Pulitzer goes to… a computer

 

 

Time for (blog) retirement?

Hi Folks,

I'm very seriously thinking of closing this blog. This one started in 2005, following some experimentation in late 2004 after hearing Adriana Lukas speak on the subject at a conference. As a writer for Information World Review at the time, I had to try and understand this new world.

In my very first post I said I wouldn't "feed the beast" in pursuit of rankings and, rightly or wrongly, I stuck to that principle. If I don't think I can inform or entertain you, then I don't bother.

Now, the posts are few and far between and, as a precaution (against tuture regrets), I have made backups of this blog and the one I ran for Guy Kewney before he died and for tributes after he passed away.

Other places seem more appropriate for my efforts these days. I add selected useful stuff to my tebbo.com website as I discover it and I still write on interesting topics in various publications – sometimes anonymously. I occasionally speak up on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. And Alison O'Leary quizzed me on Business Writing and Media Handling in a bunch of useful YouTube videos.

The question for my (very few?) readers is therefore, "Can you think of a single good reason to keep this blog going?" No need to respond if your answer is "no".

I'll just say, "Thank you for visiting and maybe see you in another place."

Kind regards,

David Tebbutt.

 

Do what you love. Love what you do.

I’m a lucky person. Not only have I enjoyed almost all of my work, I’ve also had wonderful things drop into my lap out of the blue.

It happened in January this year. The circumstances were tragic. But the outcome has been brilliant. I was asked to help out with a magazine while the editor was in hospital. I went to meet the people and, the very day I turned up, the editor died. As I say, tragic circumstances but it meant they needed an editor; quickly. And there I was.

Because it was a quarterly magazine, it meant I could slip the effort in between other work. And thus began an unexpected lifting of my spirits as I settled, once again, into the editor’s chair. (It soon became clear that I’d be slipping my other work in between pauses in the editorial work, but that was okay too.)

I love everything I do – writing for magazines and businesses, training people (mainly in media skills), rummaging around the technical highways and byways of the computer world and the web. But, most of all, I just love putting magazines and minibooks together. To have something concrete in your hands, that you’ve shepherded through, is very satisfying. Dealing with loads of new people – contributors, vendors and PR folk mainly, is good fun. Even giving contributors guidance on rewrites is great when what comes back exceeds expectations. (I only had to do it twice, mind.)

I’ve been lucky to have worked with an excellent publisher – we collaborated amiably, which hasn’t always been the case in the past – and an excellent designer. All of our work was shared through the cloud, which meant we dropped stuff off for each other and picked it up as and when it suited us. It also meant we didn’t silt up each other’s mailboxes or get into those tedious email chains.

As soon as my first issue went to press, I re-started the moribund news blog. Of the hundreds of news items that waft my way each week, it’s actually hard to find more than two that are worth following up. Perhaps I have too many sources. (As ever, I used Yahoo! Pipes to help filter the RSS feeds and consolidate them. I’ve also been using InoReader as my feed reader, which has worked out well.)

My second issue is about to go off to the printers and the whole process has been astonishingly smooth. I’ve worked at least twice as hard as I planned to but – don’t tell the publisher – it doesn’t feel like work. It would make a fantastic hobby, except that I still have to earn a living.

Sometimes, life just delivers an opportunity to do what you love. And, if it happens, almost regardless of the money, seize the chance with both hands. The fulfilment and joy of loving what you do completely outweighs any financial considerations.

A treasure trove for writers and communicators?

A slightly belated Happy New Year to you all.

It occured to me that you might be interested in a lot of links that I’ve either created or found useful in my writing and training activities. The current list is on my main tebbo.com website.

In the videos – either two of around 20 minutes each, or two sets of eight mini-videos – Alison O’Leary (PR and coaching wizard) asks me pointed questions about business writing and handling traditional media. I answer from the heart and hopefully provide food for thought.

The other links are mainly to material that I’ve read that inspires me. Although, in one case, it irritated me at the same time.

There are no catches – I don’t ask for contact details or fire ads at you.

Enjoy.

Here’s an extract:

Writing links:

George Orwell, Why I write

Publisher, writer and poet, Felix Dennis, on Journalism or Churnalism? (PDF download)

(Felix died on June 22, 2014. A great loss, and a personal one too. My wife and I were lucky enough to spend nine days as Felix’s guests in his Mustique hideaway in early 2014. I blogged about his passing here.)

The Inverted Pyramid of writing from the Air Force Departmental Publishing Office (AFDPO)

 

Writing books:

Writing Tools, by Roy Peter Clark

Grammar & Style, by Michael Dummett

Essential English, by Harold Evans

Lost for Words, by John Humphrys. It’s a bit of a rant.

Writing that Works, by Kenneth Roman and Joel Raphaelson

 

Other useful links:

Inspiration from Tom Foremski – how every company is becoming a media company.

How to handle the media – an interactive reminder of how to handle journalists (and others)

YouTube videos (me and Alison O’Leary) on business writing and media skills

 

Thanks to the giants upon whose shoulders I stood

Once upon a time (1966 was the first time), I'd learn a programming language and then apply this knowledge to whatever problems were chucked my way. As I've got older, I decide what I want, then go online for help in doing it. Okay, it doesn't make me a professional coder but I learn plenty along the way and end up with a website that I'm in charge of and can change at the drop of a hat.

Without Google and the World Wide Web, Lord knows what I'd have done. But, thanks to them and all the places they led me to, I have a site which, while falling short of elegant, does what I want. More importantly, I hope it gives its visitors an enjoyable and useful experience.

This post isn't about the website, although you may need to know that it's epocselet.com in order to understand some of the comments below. This post is about recognition of all those people and places I discovered on my journey. Without their help, I would still be trying to learn JavaScript or PHP from scratch.

Here they are, in order of the number of hits I recorded in my Firefox History file. First the top ten (the first three were on tap continuously):

Hits

??? Microsoft ExpressionWeb4 was an invaluable website development environment.

??? W3C's Markup Validation Service. As the name suggests, it checks the validity of web pages.

??? Firefox Web Developer tools – especially Web console and Debugger.

230 stackoverflow A marvellous forum which covered pretty much everything, including PHP, JavaScript, HTML5 canvas and colour drop-down menus.

131 w3schools.com An online reference manual which I referred to for JavaScript, HTML5 Canvas, HTML colours, JS programming tips/demos and string parsing.

101 JQuery Radar Plus Mehdi Tazi adapted Ryan Allred's Radar Chart. I adapted Mehdi's. Figuring out how it worked was like solving a giant puzzle.

 55 The PHP Manual and source of everything.

 51 Radar Chart JQuery Plugin Ryan Allred's original code.

 29 Plusnet's 'friendly' area. I used it for CGI and PHP hosting stuff.

 28 SitePoint is a great source of web-building help. I used it for Canvas, HTML5. PHP, JavaScript, Radio button array and 960 grid stuff.

 

Now for the rest of the top 20. They may be lower in hit count but they were no less valuable – a single hit would often point me in the right direction:

19 Mario Lurig's PHP code checker came in handy when the PHP would stall.

 7 Maths Is Fun took me back to schooldays to remind me about radians, sines and cosine. I could remember 'sohcahtoa' but couldn't remember what practical use to put it to.

 6 tuts+ explained the 960 grid system, but also explained other things, including HTML Forms.

 5 The jquery learning center does what it says on the tin. I used it as a reference for scopes, arrays and operators.

 5 960 grid system. I found the 960 24 grid system perfect for laying out the web pages (and, often, changing them quickly.)

 4 A simple guide to HTML came in handy for checking how to include JavaScript in HTML.

 4 Six Revisions is a website hints and tips site. I used it to read about the 960-grid-system and HTML5's canvas (on which the charts appear).

 4 Chris Pietschmann kindly explained how to colour dropdown items in an HTML form.

 3 Chris Wiegman showed how to dig out the correct IP address for a visitor. (If you're with a hosting organisation, you're still fairly anonymous though.)

 2 Home & Learn helped me a lot with understanding how to work with the HTML5 canvas.

 

Other honourable mentions should go to:

Google Analytics – which keeps an eye on visitor behaviour.

The many people who looked and commented as we went through. I guess some would prefer not to be named, but you'll know if you were one of them. A big thank you to you. I learnt something new from every single discussion.

Finally, my partners in crime Dr. Bill Nichols and Martin Banks.

It's been a blast. It made me remember why I loved programming. But also taught me that I could never make a living at it these days.

Thank you all for five very interesting months.

telescope or epocselet? Which way are you looking?

How often do you glaze over when someone enthuses about a product or service because you don’t “get it”?

They blast off without the faintest idea about your circumstances, your needs or your desires. Result, a baffled story-teller and a semi-comatose listener.

In extremis, it’s the religious zealots who knock on your door. But milder forms exist – the Facebook enthusiasts who are always trying to shove some dodgy philosophy down your throat – usually through pictures or video links. (Recommendation: ‘unfollow’ them – they stay in your friends list but you’re spared the distraction.)

Sadly, these zealots exist in business too. Some organisations are so wrapped up in their own inventions that all their publicity and promotional activities are inward-looking. Self-obsessed, if you like. And this goes for the company spokespeople too. Anyone who says ‘we’ more than ‘you’ is likely to be guilty of this.(By the way, you can get a chart of where you stand, by doing this quick assessment – it takes just a couple of minutes.)

Once you start putting your prospect first (in the same way that all good journalists put their readers first) your story will emerge as something your prospect wants to hear or read. Something that promises to, and will, deliver a desired value. This will lead them to your physical or digital door and, if you continue to play your cards right, you’ll have a new customer.

Common sense? Yes. But, in decades of dialogue with vendors of all kinds, I’ve discovered that many actually fail to make that bridge. They pay lip-service to the principle, but their words let them down. When consulting (often with Martin Banks and, more recently, with Dr. Bill Nichols), we’ve found ourselves using the term ‘looking through the wrong end of the telescope’ to describe this inward-looking approach.

We’ve even created a website called epocselet.com (that’s ‘telescope’ backwards) as an umbrella for our disparate but aligned services. Our focus is firmly on executive management and we’d be delighted to act as guides or sounding boards in the discovery, articulation and sharing of your stories. Use us as little or as much of us as you like.

The journalist’s mantra ‘know your audience’ can be applied equally in business. Change ‘audience’ to ‘prospect’ if you want, but the principle applies to anyone trying to influence anyone else, whether a prospect or an intermediary. If you’re in business, you may have multiple audiences but, at heart, you’re trying to move the same stories through to the ultimate audience, your prospect. You may be trying to influence internal staff, analysts, bloggers, journalists and the many social media cascades. In every case you need to ask yourself, “what’s in it for them?”, in order to refine the basic story to best effect.

Written baldly like that, it seems like common sense. But sometimes it’s hard to change your perspective without independent and objective help. It’s not my place to tell you where to go for this. Anyone intelligent who understands communication skills, your marketplace and who has no axe to grind will be able to help you.

But I have to mention that Bill, Martin and I – solo or in various permutations would be more than happy to help you if you’re interested. You’ll find more about us and our services at epocselet.com

 

Goodbye Felix Dennis

Last week, someone very special to me died. I could have sworn I posted here about his passing, but the week was a bit of a blur and I clearly hadn't.

Last year's post about him (Poetry in Motion) will give a flavour of my feelings about Felix.

Read his 'company poem' The Bearded Dwarf to get a sense of what life was like aboard the good ship Dennis Publishing, or Bunch Books as it was when I worked there. (I understand Rolls Royce was none too happy about the logo. I knew life there would be a blast as soon as I saw it engraved in the glass above the entrance door.)

Felix took me on to help create a personal computer magazine. This swiftly turned into the relaunch, in September 1979, of Personal Computer World.

 

Here are some posts I made in Facebook last week – the only place I semi-publicly shared my thoughts and feelings.

23/6 RIP Felix Dennis, wonderful man, good friend. We're gonna miss you so much.

 

23/6 Me, Sylvie, Felix and mystery person in foliage. March 1st this year. Didn't know it was our 'goodbye' to Felix. Lots of great memories of the man.

 

24/6 When I met Felix Dennis, he took me to the art room where they were laying out John Wayne's obituary. I said, "I didn't know he'd died." Felix said, "He hasn't yet, but he's very ill." Eye opener for me.

What has amazed me this week is that papers and online sources have had years to get the facts right about Felix, yet they still manage to screw up his biographical basics.

It makes me wonder how much of what we read is similarly incorrect.

 

25/6 I go to sleep thinking about Felix Dennis and I wake up thinking about him. It's like an infection of the brain. He's never far from my thoughts because he had such a profound impact on my life. I'm probably going to shut up about him for a while but, before I do, I'd like to share a couple of his insights with you.

One is a scan of an interview I did with him years ago for the now defunct "Sustainable Solutions" magazine. It was so completely against the sustainability grain that the publisher loved it.

The other is the pdf of his excellent lecture (Journalism or Churnalism) on why the reader is king.

Enjoy. And take heed.

Goodbye Felix. Thank goodness you've left such a huge written and recorded legacy.

 

29/6 If you think you've got a great story about Felix Dennis, check these out first. They are utterly brilliant. (They're tributes from people who've worked for him.)

 

You don't have to agree with everything Felix did, few people would, but he was a man of utter conviction, he was honest, he was an inspirational publisher and he made a massive difference to tens of thousands of people's lives. (Maybe more than that.) Including mine.

Thank you.

 

Social Business

Luis Suarez spent many years at IBM in knowledge management and social business. Earlier this year, he branched out on his own. He's a popular speaker at conferences and advisor to many about the practicalities of social business.

One of his recent blog posts about social business challenges in the workplace spurred me to respond – something I should do more of (like blogging) but rarely get round to.

Social business at senior management level is not always appreciated or understood. In fact some (many?) actively resist it. I tried to take the management perspective with comments like:

It would be interesting to know how many of the 'resisters' of a top-down mindset are in fear of losing their power?

Perhaps they've acquired it through inheritance, accident, shareholding — anything except merit.

Or maybe they consider that their unique perspective wouldn't be understood by the 'lower orders', even if they were to share it.

When email first came in, analysis revealed that many middle managers were just 'message passers'. People just started leaving them out of conversations and they were exposed and, presumably, moved out of the way.

It's a bit different at the higher echelons of the company. I guess the answer is to find those senior management willing to engage socially and show the non-participants the value (e.g. better understanding of what's going on — in both directions) and see if participation spreads. If it doesn't then 'engagement' should perhaps be raised as an agenda item at board meetings.

Luis' responded quite fully (and harmoniously) and my response to this included:

Agree with you. Including your point on the restrictiveness (ie non-social) aspects of email.

I think that 'effective working' should always be the goal. I worry a bit when the goal is expressed as 'social' anything. Social is the mechanism, not the destination. It's something a lot of 'evangelists' (not you, of course) seem to miss.

He responded again so, if you have any interest in the subject of social business practicalities, I really urge you to add Luis' blog to your list of thought leaders in this area. He's widely known as Elsua, if you want to search for him. (Saves you ending up with loads of footballer hits.)

25 years of clients: alive, eaten and dead

I’ve been training mainly IT companies for over 25 years, mostly in partnership with Martin Banks. I thought it might be interesting to find out where all these companies are now,

After a lot of digging, I found out that about 20 percent are more or less untraceable – either out of business or fragmented and buried deep in multiple owners. About half are still ‘themselves’ and the remainder are now part of other organisations.

Here are a couple of charts which might interest you:

 

The chart below shows which companies have been absorbing other clients.

. If you want to find out more, ownership details and website links are on my website.

From the personal computer to the web: a searchable archive

Phew! That was hard work. I've tarted up the HTML of 263 of my columns and features written in the pre-web days (1979 to 1995). They should all be readable in any browser on any device.

The archive is searchable, so if you're into nostalgia or research, you can  check out my take on just about anything personal computer (including Mac) related from those years. It's a mix of opinion, reviews and feature articles written for a mix of consumer and business publications.

I must have been doing something right because my writing was put up for eight awards, I was a finalist for all eight and won the Times/Hewlett Packard Technology Columnist of the Year three years running. (I was then banned from re-entry.)

Apologies for any remaining typos. The articles were scanned and some words got mangled. I've fixed them where I've spotted them.

Have fun (or not).

http://www.tebbo.com/archive/