Due to others’ appointments, the Vista Group meeting today was a mere duo: myself and Jim Donovan, Esq., who will give up blogging in 10 days. It meant it was the second-least well attended meeting in our history. Jim has never let us forget the least well attended one.
I have always said that one should blog when one wants to. If one feels pressured to do so, then stop. Blogging should be a fun activity and, for me, it’s cathartic. With a new venture on the horizon for Jim (from where he will likely blog again), time is at a premium, and I can fully appreciate that he needs to take a step back.
Of course we will not bid farewell to Jim just because he stops blogging, principally, as Natalie wrote in our emails arranging today’s meeting, we are too incompetent to organize the monthly meetings without him. And he got us in to the Wellington Club for the end-of-2009 edition where we took over the Deputy Mayor’s table. (Albeit on a day that the Deputy Mayor was not there, which made for a less comical time.)
The Club (the luncheon at which should have been chronicled at the time) has its own gym. Apparently, Club members often talked about how our gym’ll fix it. That is, however, another story.
There were some in-depth discussions about my mayoral campaign and the Wellington City Council, the fact that Anouska Hempel, a.k.a. Lady Weinberg, is a Wellingtonian and how she is important to anyone who watched various Hammer Horrors, and the Y2K episode of Family Guy and its homage to Dallas—things that we would not have digressed to had Natalie and Mark been there. (Jim had brought up ‘Who shot J. R.?’* on his blog a few days before.)
However, we covered the boiler-plate approach of some IP law firms, the bad customer service we received from Vodafone and Sky TV, and the lack of clarity over some WCC charges over which Jim got three different figures for the same thing. From what I could make out, the charge varied depending on the person he spoke to, the day of the week, and the flutter of a butterfly’s wings over the Shetland Islands. Need I push transparency again?
Above One of Anouska Hempel’s creations, the self-named Hempel hotel, in London. I believe they want a definite article in the official name, but I can’t be brought to capitalize it in the middle of a sentence. I will only make an exception for residents of The Terrace in Wellington.
* It was, of course, Kristin, Sue Ellen’s sister. Everyone remembers the hype, no one remembers the answer. Back in those days, we found out a year later in New Zealand, and there were no internet spoilers.—JY
To be confirmed is an interview with the BBC, in my politician guise. I have not been on radio in the other hemisphere for something like seven years, and that time it went to some of the most way-out places (it was UN Radio). I have one reservation only: my accent goes all over the place. Remember how the Rt Hon Jim Bolger went funny with his when foreign dignitaries came and he sounded like he was mocking the foreigners? Or, a few years before, Michael Fay during the America’s Cup lawsuits and his Americanized pronunciation of water?
Yeah, I do that. And even more disturbingly, I know I do it while I’m doing it, and cannot stop it.
It’s going to be hell if a northerner interviews me and I start sounding like Jimmy Nail. I am told that I do a very good Lily Savage when I have the ’flu. And if I get a southerner, you will think I was trying to impress Keeley Hawes (which I try to do, anyway, never mind Matthew). Not one is sufficiently “Kiwi” for Wellington voters. Though I might find that British expatriates based in Wellington might suddenly vote for me. Because in any case I will sound better than Harold Wilson.
Necessity is the mother of all invention. I never thought some of the Der Untergang (Downfall) parodies could be topped, but I think this just happened.
The day the current mayor, Kerry Prendergast, announced her intention to stand for a fourth term, I was asked by a few media colleagues what I thought. The wittiest reply I gave to Salient, as it was an email interview, and I seem to be cheekier in writing than I am in speaking. I won’t spoil it yet, but let’s just say one learns an awful lot from television.
This morning was a very good start to the day, giving a guest lecture at my Alma Mater, Victoria University, thanks to my friend Helen Baxter, who has begun teaching there. In fact, I taught out of the same building in 2000 when the campus was shared with Massey University, and the A on the front was not mounted backwards (typography students must have taken note by now).
One thing I hit upon, and I don’t think I have shared with readers, is the concept of personal branding taking on corporate behaviours. We know that corporations and countries have been swapping roles a bit in the 1990s (Wally Olins wrote a book on it, called Trading Identities), but I don’t think it has been properly addressed at the personal sphere (corrections welcome).
We have corporations trying to look mean and responsive, and speak with a personal voice—the One principles that Stefan Engeseth has talked about, and the idea of one-to-one from Christian Grönroos. They are trying to look like individuals, so the person in charge of the Tweetstream is the “voice” of the organization.
Meanwhile, people are becoming aware of branding themselves, of differentiating who they are, and finding the right things to align with in order to make themselves employable. Of course, such efforts must still remain authentic, as we can see through the spin, but it would not surprise me if the nascent ideas of personal branding in the 1990s become formalized in to whole courses on personal brand management.
I refer not just to styling, of course, but making sure embarrassing stuff is taken off Facebook (I believe my words were along the lines of, ‘By all means, party and show you’re human. But photos of you doing a powerchuck: maybe not’), of figuring out what your vision is from a very early stage, of engaging with your audiences, and, if I may be so bold, living your brand as part of living your life.
The cynic in me recognizes that last phrase sounds dodgy because it cheapens the whole experience of life into a brand event, which is not precisely what I mean. But it is important to have some idea of a personal direction in mind and doing things that are compatible with that. This is, in some respects, no different to some of the self-help claptrap out there, explained in corporate branding language as opposed to spiritual fulfilment.
However, it’s not altogether a bad way to think. I’m willing to bet some of us have done exactly this, perhaps unconsciously or informally. We all have some purpose, some raison d’être, and whether we like thinking about it in branding terms or some other method is up to us. Brand, at least, provides a framework and some boxes to tick, and if they help people get a personal advantage and get the job of their dreams, then why not?
Note to self: Keeley Hawes jokes work a lot better with heaps of Brits or Anglophiles in the room.
As of today, I am back with the reliable Firefox 3·0 on my desktop machine as well. Firefox 3.5 would generally crash daily, though I remember there was once a three-day period in January when it did not crash at all. (There were other days when it would crash two or three times, just to make up for it and keep its daily record.) In 2010, Firefox 3·0, on my Asus laptop running Vista, might have crashed once, if ever. (I kept things on 3·0 there, and was right to.)
I liken 3·5 to the Nissan Sunny B210 or Datsun 120Y: a car which offered no improvement over its predecessor and, in some cases, was even worse.
I waited till 3·5 had been out for some time before I even considered it, thinking that Firefox had ironed out the bugs. I think it must have been around November when I “upgraded”. What a big mistake that was.
I noticed no speed difference and had to put up with the regular crashes. And, judging by feedback, I was not alone.
One helpful netizen suggested Flash could have been responsible and she may be right. However, rather than change to another type of browser, I decided the best course was to “downgrade” to 3·0. which worked with Flash, Java, or whatever else could be thrown at it in the course of daily browsing.
Another asked if the crash occurred at the same time each day and, if so, could it be the Firefox automatic updates? After a week’s study, since I got into the habit of Tweeting each time Firefox crashed at one period, I had to conclude that it was around the same time (evening NZDT), but not the same hour. It varied by around four hours.
Thankfully, Mozilla keeps a copy of it on its website, probably because it realizes that 3·5 is buggy as heck. I only found the link by accident last month and vowed to put restore 3·0 on this machine. Mozilla even continues to upgrade it—this is 3·0·18, which is a few sub-versions newer than what had been on this machine last year.
I can’t tell you how bored I am of seeing the Firefox quality control agent come up every day asking me if I could explain what I was doing at the time of the crash. Well, chaps, I was browsing. And, after today, I hope to only see that window very rarely.
I’m not even going to try 3·6 at least till August or September 2010. But I think that’s just the next type of Nissan Sunny, right? It stays with rear-wheel drive but has more modern colours?
My friend Pete informs me of his Google Buzz experience, and it’s not positive, either.
He is no stranger to technology and is more expert than I am on these matters. He had turned off Buzz, and was surprised to find that it was still taking his information and publishing it to his followers.
His sister took a screen shot of what she saw on her screen, which is shown above. Notice at the top of the screen, it says that Pete is following her—even though by this time he had turned Buzz off. In Pete’s words: ‘I’ve now had to go into settings where there is a further option to disable it altogether and kill all your posts. I’m hoping that stops it!’
I hope so, too!
If any of the old Voxers are still around reading this blog, I met up with Paikea (a nom-de-plume of one of my neighbours and friends on the old Vox blogging platform) on Sunday. It was a wonderful catch-up and it was as though we had been Real World 1·0 friends for years. Sometimes, blogs really do help you get into the mind of others so you know if you would hit it off or not.
I look forward to meeting her husband in the near future, too, and we have exchanged phone numbers and emails. I wonder if Linda-Joy and her husband might be next, as they are nearby in Melbourne.
Finally for tonight, how about the above? These are the followers on one Twitter account (I have an inkling who it is, but it’s not my place to say so). If you want me to feel honoured and very flattered, then following HM Queen Rania al-Abdullah of Jordan, Shakira Ripoll, Sir Richard Branson and Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger immediately afterme will do it. I am also in good company with my dear friend Manas Fuloria over in Gurgaon.
The best quotation in the American media this week? In my opinion, it would have to be this:
Howard Stern is being considered to replace Simon Cowell when he leaves “American Idol” after this season.
Apparently Satan was out of Fox’s price range.
This is a punny one for my Swedish friends. I know this is an innocent warning sign, but when a foreigner comes and he has a different skin colour, his mind wanders on what it could mean! Here’s a bit of humorous context about a very inappropriate sign at the National Bank in Wellington, New Zealand.
