Congratulations, a Good Luck, and a New Venture..

Thanks to Narunaka. Usual rules apply.

This is going to be short and sweet.

Nina (of Too Small To Be Big) has just got herself a new gig. So congratulations. Lauren (of SheSeesRed) has had a successful viewing of her installation at Spinach. Very well done to you - I also have a photo of the sweary artist addressing the audience, which will be up on my Flickr at some point..

Good luck to Marcus Brown in his new venture, The Ides of March. Anyone who reads this blog who doesn't know Marcus (not many, I wouldn't have thought) should know that he's incredibly perceptive, a fantastic writer, and a very, very bright. I think he's going to do really well.

Finally...a new venture. I've begun to co-write a blog for grads, which can be found here. Sam & Anton from the Ad Lads are helping, along with Jack Bauer from the Brand Republic Forums. We'll be detailing our experiences, and asking some other people (yes, you) to help contribute and guest post.

You can find it here.

Blog/Brand devotion..

I'd like to begin this post by saying a big get well soon to Marcus Brown. Having the foresight to bring a camera along to the doctors, let alone blog about it deserves some respect. I'm not sure I'd have done the same, but this just cements Marcus's legendary status.

Curiously, this also coincided with me reading Naked Conversations (the book's blog can be found here) and learning about the 'rules' for blogging, and how blogging frequently can help businesses put out the fire of negative publicity.

I'd like to extend this belief into more personal thing (touched on by the book). It's quite staggering, when you think about it - blogging voices seem to in some cases to subsume the 'real' or certainly cross over. If any one of my blogging friends suddenly stopped posting for a prolonged period of time, I'd wonder what had happened to them. Yet, with twitter and technology like it, we are now more connected than ever. Indeed, if a blogger was ever struck down with illness, I wonder how many would text twitter before doing anything else.

Becoming this devoted (or mildly insane, in the case of the latter example) would surely have tremendous implications. You'd become what Gladwell calls the 'Salesman' of the piece, inspiring an audience almost on the basis of your relentless blogging. And, as one of the book's examples cites, 'good' bloggers blog once or twice a day. I've resolved to do that, but it's not going well this year. Perhaps I should get a Yo-Yo. I do have a digital camera now though, so more random pictures will be forthcoming.

Going back to the book for a second; it references a chap who was interested (to put it mildly) in Treo's. If blogs can whip up high priests of the brand, think how much your product would benefit. Even entering into a conversation with your consumer would surely help - yes, even the flaming you'd probably receive at some point.

Indeed, this blog was initially begun as a highly self referential online CV. However, as it's matured/become more irreverent/posted about music, I hope it's done rather more than that. I would like to think now it's a conversation with the world, as well as an online record of all my thoughts, even if they aren't always strictly marketing or advertising focused - I have had difficulty reconciling normal situations to marketing or advertising scenarios, unlike Mr Godin. Still, I'm not paid as much as he is and am not published quite yet.

I think I'd feel quite sad to abandon it at this point, although I'm not about to take photos of myself on a hospital bed. Some conversations shouldn't include photos of me laid out - I'll leave that to the drunken Flickr photos.