Simon G's Blog

At the end of January this year there was a poll in LinkedIn asking people how they wanted to be informed about LinkedIn's new features and I was surprised to see how low RSS rated in terms of a preference, particularly when compared with Email Alerts. Source: http://polls.linkedin.com/poll-results/18536/aihrw (as at 22 March 2009) This reminded me that despite the fact that I have been using RSS for many years, it just hasn't become mainstream. I moved to using RSS when I found myself going to the same web sites every day to see what was new and that they were commonly starting to have a RSS logo. The beauty of RSS is that the information comes to you in one place rather than you needing to go to each site individually. For more information about how I keep up to date with what's going on in the world, check out " Keeping up with what's happening in the world ". I wonder whether the terms "RSS" and "feed" are just too geeky and this i...

Two months ago I read a blog post from Tony Hsieh (the CEO at Zappos.com) titled " How Twitter Can Make You A Better (and Happier) Person " about values that has shaped the way I communicate. Zappos came up with 10 core values to define their company culture, and Tony has then used these same values as his own personal values as well: Deliver WOW Through Service Embrace and Drive Change Create Fun and A Little Weirdness Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded Pursue Growth and Learning Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit Do More With Less Be Passionate and Determined Be Humble By embracing these values as his personal values, this has meant that Tony is less likely to complain or vent in his communications (be that Twitter or in face-to-face communications), because it is not in line with the Zappos core values. He instead will step back and try and find humour in a "bad" situation and re-frame the ...

I had the privilege of spending the weekend with lots of great energising, exciting people doing great stuff in New Zealand at KiwiFoo 2009 (aka Baa Camp) . Run in an unconference style, the topics were wide and varied and included a variety of topics such as the opportunities of Real-time data, the Economy, Section 92A, Cloud Computing, Sustainability, Broadband, Building Communities, Working globally from New Zealand, OpenID, Utility 2.0 and the list goes on. There were so many exciting sessions that one of the biggest challenges was working out what to go to. The conversations during, in-between and after the sessions went early into the morning on both Friday and Saturday nights and were packed with great intellectual discussion and debate. Some of my takeaways (respecting the FrieNDA rules i.e."what goes on tour, stays on tour") included: Working globally from New Zealand If we can work out how to work well remotely then this can help to keep smart young people in New...

Having worked in a corporate for many years, I find that it is often useful to step back from the every day process and ask a few very simple questions: If this was my money would I spend it on this? If this was a startup what would we be doing different? Is this really a Must Have requirement / Do the stakeholders understand the impact this has to cost, timeframe and/or complexity? Challenge yourself, challenge others, question why.

"The One Minute Manager builds high performing teams" by Ken Blanchard, Donald Carew and Eunice Parisi Carew is an excellent book that simply explains through examples the four stages that teams go through and that a different leadership style is required in each; namely Orientation, Dissatisfaction, Integration and Production. For each stage, it is clearly articulated what the Characteristics are, what the Needs of the team are, what the Issues are that need to be addressed and what type of leadership style is appropriate. It is a very quick and easy read, written as a conversation, and I found it very easy to relate to when I looked at various projects I had been involved with. I will be re-reading this again.

Impressed by all the ways the NZ Herald is allowing people to get the latest news (Twitter, RSS Updates, Widgets, YouTube, Digital Replica, Email Updates, RSS Feeds, Mobile, Paper Delivery), I decided to look into what some traditionally Old Media newspapers are doing with New Media in New Zealand; The New Zealand Herald, Otago Daily Times, The Dominion Post, Waikato Times, and the other "Newspaper" sites hosted on the Stuff.co.nz platform. The New Zealand Herald - http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ At the base of each page, the NZ Herald promotes all of the ways they allow people to get the latest news. Each post enables people to distribute the content further via Email or IM. Blogs are also a component of the site where people can comment on a variety of topics. There are however no general commentary features for non-Blog news stories. Otago Daily Times - http://www.odt.co.nz/ The Otago Daily Times has an RSS Feed and also sports an Online Poll. Another feature it that they e...

"Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us" is an easy read from Seth Godin that presents the case for why You should be leading. Everybody can inspire a tribe towards collective action, regardless of where they sit in an organisation, and this book challenges you to step up, lead and challenge the status quo. There are some great snippets of information throughout, and I agree with most of what he is suggesting re Leadership, although there is also a hate message re Management that I think is a bit too strong. It is a good book for motivation and whilst not prescriptive in how to lead provides some good pearls of wisdom for leading in the digital age.