Ged Carroll

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  • These4Walls

    Actually, the original title extolling Lederhosen was total fiction: there is no leiderhosen related content here and I will not be putting any up in the future, instead this post is about These4Walls. I was inspired to write the title after having received a mail from a former colleague of mine – Jacqui. And no I won’t write about Dunlop Greenflash trainers (running shoes to our non-British readers).

    Back to reality, I attended a seminar by marketing group these4walls on research versus creativity. These4walls are lovely people and have some groovy video clips here. The evening went well, with the audience plied with a modicum of wine, Becks bier or mineral water (in my case). The crux of much of the discussion revolved around poor problem definition, client realpolitik and ignorance intruding on strategic thought and how innovation can be ‘ironed’ out through research. I decided to pose the question: how do you improve your client? Given that the underlying form of my parts of the discussion was that clients were at the root of many problems. Steps that I have taken in the past have included:

    – bringing the client in to sample agency life (I had to skip my three-hour lunch at Hakkasan that day, I couldn’t disappear to the gents to have a line of creative pick-me-up every 15 minutes and had to book some meetings in to pretend that I provided creative input and drove campaigns forward)

    – get a feel for the realpolitik clientside and suggesting ways around it in a constructive manner whilst still delivering a programme aimed at providing business benefits (usually for Americans)

    – resign the account

    As the great PR maestro Larry Weber once said to me “Agency life is great, you work five years and then go in house and demand a fortune. When your in an agency to get to work on a range of clients and if one of them is an asshole you can tell them to go fcuk themselves”. Like the magic shopkeeper in Mr Benn my governor Cathy Pittham appeared and explained that telling a client to perform a sexual act on themselves was a career limiting move. (But I can dare to dream)

    In the UK we have holidays on the Friday through to the Monday, so expect little if any content to be added to this blog.

  • Fopp vinyl update

    Further to my posting regarding Fopp and its vinyl section. As you can see from the mail below they will still be keeping their LPs, it is only 12″ singles that they are no longer selling.

    Hi

    just so you know it’s just the 12″ singles that were are losing not the LP’s

    Hopefully, you’ll still shop at Fopp.

    Cheers

    Fopp
    1 Earlham Street
    Covent Garden
    London
    WC2H 9LL
    T: 020 7379 0883
    F: 020 7240 8355
    E: earlham.street at fopp.co.uk
    W: www.fopp.co.uk

    THIS E-MAIL AND ANY ATTACHED FILES ARE CONFIDENTIAL, PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND MAY BE LEGALLY PRIVILEGED. If you are not the intended addressee or have received the e-mail in error,
    any use of this e-mail or any copying, distribution or other dissemination of it is strictly prohibited.
    If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender immediately and then delete the e-mail.
    E-mail cannot be guaranteed to be secure, error free or free from viruses. Neither the sending company nor its employees accepts any liability whatsoever for any loss or damage which may be caused as a result of the transmission of this message by e-mail. If verification is required, please request a hard copy version.

    —– Original Message —–
    From:
    To:
    Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 11:01 PM
    Subject: store_londoncoventgarden – Posted : 22:01:51 27/03/2004

    =================================================
    store_londoncoventgarden – Posted : 22:01:51 27/03/2004
    =================================================
    First Name : Rorsharch
    Email address : rorsharch at rorsharch.com
    =================================================
    Enquiries
    =================================================
    Enquiry CD :
    Enquiry Vinyl :
    Enquiry DVD
    Enquiry Book :
    General Enquiry :
    Hi, I was very disappointed to hear today that you will be getting rid of
    the vinyl section. You have gone to the trouble of building it up and having
    a top quality team to run it alongside a really good selection, not a pile
    of crap like many stores. I go to Fopp because I can buy my DVDs, vinyl and
    books under one roof. SAVE THE VINYL or I’ll shop elsewhere. Who do I need
    to take it up with at your head office?
    =================================================

    More culture related content here.

  • Symbiot – Mutually Assured Disruption

    Symbiot a Texas based Internet security company has announced a new technology that allows companies to ‘strike back’ at cyber attackers. Symbiot is looking to become a sort of ‘Smith & Wesson’ or Winchester of the ‘world wild web’, this may not be a good idea.

    Imagine giving bank staff access to machine guns. Then imagine telling them that you are going to export their jobs to Mumbai or a 14 year-old kid upsets them and you end up with a Falling Down type scenario. Further imagine that the bank employee kills a whole pile of bystanders.

    This is the real-world equivalent of what could happen on the Internet. Hackers and script kiddies use slave machines to mount an attack whilst being concealing their own identities.

    ISPs and POPs (the internet equivalent of bus companies and roadways) could end up casualties, whilst the real perps get away scot free. In fact, this infrastructure disruption could encourage hackers to seek out and provoke a Symbiot powered response as a ‘denial of service attack by proxy’ on a particular network provider.

    In the real world this already happens with SWATing. A false call is made to the local police station of whoever is to be SWATed. Claims are made of sounds of gunshots, yelling or even hostages and the local police SWAT team rolls out on the unsuspecting victim. This is all relatively easily done through caller ID spoofing and other phone phreaking techniques. There is a clear analogue between this and hackers using IP spoofing or even machine hijackign to trigger a response.

    Now, imagine if one of Symbiot’s killer boxes was hacked and got into the hands of someone who really knew how to do it?

    While the Dept of Homeland Security worries about the risk of radical Islamic hackers, its time they should start looking a little bit closer to home….

    You can read my contribution to AlwaysOn about Symbiot. More security related content here.

  • Howard Dean

    Howard Dean was feted by the media before the nominations started, because of a vocal and visible core of supporters, but then disappeared as the votes were cast. IT Conversations has a very interesting recording of a speech by Joe Trippi who was responsible for Howard Dean’s democratic party campaign at the recent O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. The Dean campaign looked to overthrow the system of interest group money purchasing television spots and presidential ads and so an election. He was inspired by the dialogue empowered by different web technologies.

    Joe Trippi admitted that he was defeated by the system of lobbyists, money and traditional media. Dean started with 137,000 USD in the bank, 437 supporters nationally and a campaign team of seven. Dean did manage to use the Internet to get grassroots support to achieve an unparalleled amount of campaign funding from over 300,000 supporters.

    The use of Meetup.com to get online supporters to meet up and then plan real world grassroots action over the water cooler, or over the garden fence was a key element of the campaign.

    Trippi said that the internet community do not get the harsh realities of real world politics – money matters. It has also shone a spotlight on the established political machine of special interest groups.

    Is Trippi the next Peter Mandelson? I don’t know but his tactics to promote Howard Dean have raised awareness of the web as an effective political tool. The key problem with the Internet based campaign is it couldn’t respond to the repetition of negative television advertisements and negative new stories in the established media. So there is hope for PR people and ad agencies yet.

    As an aside I would be interested to see how online grassroots lobbying communities like MoveOn (from the people that gave us the original Flying Toasters screensavers back in the day) will influence the political debate. More related content here.

  • Science Museum with my Dad

    Mission to the science museum

    My parents came down for the weekend. While my Mam was content to chill out and do some knitting whilst listening to Daniel O’Donnell slaughtering country and western standards, my Dad and I were at a loss for something to do. Having been told by my friend Kirsty who has a little boy that the Science Museum has free admission, I had a brain wave.

    Steam power

    My Dad is a mechanical fitter by trade and we spent about two hours in the Science museum finding out about the development of the steam engine and the rise of the internal combustion engine. We found out that James Watt did not invent the steam engine (our school teachers lied to us) but improved on existing designs. We took a brief break and then pushed into the space section and then on into the modern world with everything from a Mills & Boon novel to an transgenic sheep proteins (derived from their milk). So far so good, the digital section did not impress, despite its architectural scale, but the aviation gallery got a big thumps up from Pops.

    When he comes down to pick my Mam up next week, we hope to go back to explore more of the Science Museum. By that time the Science Museum guidebook will have arrived and help us make more out of the visit, when we manage to get another visit in.

    Thameslink

    The journey home to Luton however was a bit of a trauma with Thameslink trains shutting down their service completely. I am thankful that my commute usually isn’t that traumatic. We had to get home via Milton Keynes (a soul less bit of urban planning) and it took us four hours. Once you get off the rail network the public transport outside London is poor. More related posts here.